Colorizing

Tools: Photoshop 7+

Description: The correct way to color a black and white image without the result looking like a washed out wannabe.

Credit for the stock photo: Click

So what exactly does colorizing mean? Basically, just turning a black and white image into a pretty colored image! It appeals to your inner 3 year old, you know, with the coloring book and everything! Only this, is more advanced and it looks much more real.

Start off with a nice black and white image. You may download this image to go along with the tutorial. (People are easiest to color...compared to scenery o_O)

I'm using this stock image from Deviantart Download

Open up your image in photoshop (File > Open)

Once it's open, let's clean it up a bit. If you see the little lock icon beside the layer, just double click it and when the box pops up, press okay. Duplicate the layer (Layer > Duplicate Layer) and set the layer style to Soft Light at 100%.

Merge the layers with Ctrl+Shift+E While the image isn't the best of quality, it'll work.

Make a new folder to hold all of your coloring layers; click the folder like icon on your layers palette. Name that folder color.

Create a new layer in it and name if hair. Usually, if the image had a background, you would start with that first. Pick the color that you would like for her hair and use the paint bucket to fill the entire layer with that.

I chose a brownish color. Set that layer style to color. Do that for everything, eyes, lips, skin. Create a new layer, select the color that you think you want and use the brush tool to color it in. Make sure that you do everything from the bottom up, don't put the eyes layer before the skin layer, and vice versa. Don't worry if it looks reasonably fake, we'll fix that later.

See! Here are the orders that I've colored everything at. That's also the order of my layers, with Hair being the first layer and working up until Eyeliner. Yes, it looks incredibly fake and crappy at the moment. I know, but we're going to fix that! How? With hue/saturation of course! WTF? You'll learn.

First of all, make sure that the Hair layer is selected on your layers palette. Then click Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation.

Having the Colorize option checked (NOTE: You don't HAVE to have the colorize option checked, it's completely up to you!) , this is what I have. Click

Yours doesn't have to look like mine at all, maybe you've decided to make her blonde?

Anyways, do this for all the layers and adjust the Hue/Saturation levels until you come up with something vaguely human like.

Here's my end result so far. (NOooOoo, of course we're not finished! There's still several steps to take! Muahah.)

Result

Looks slightly better, but still not a whole lot. Her hair needs more depth to it, and so does the rest of the picture. To achieve that, create two new layers. Name one white and one black. Set the layer styles to overlay.

Now with a brush, on the black layer, use the black brush to create some shadows in all the areas that need some (under chin, hair, etc) Do the same with the white layer.

Here's my result after I've added some green to her eyes, changed the color, adjusted the hair, skin, and lips some more. Experiment with the different layer styles and opacity to get the effect you want.

After some more editing...

As you can tell, everything is a bit more intense, and I've even added some eyeshadow. Yet, we are still not done. I know. Who would of thought that coloring something would take so long eh?

This is the finaly touch on the image.

Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves

You can either use my adjustments or experiment with your own.
Red

• Input: 145 Output: 166
• Input: 68 Output: 61

Green

• Input: 144 Output: 193
• Input: 75 Output: 85

Blue

• Input: 147 Output: 190
• Input: 64 Output: 100

You may add some more finishing touches and voila. Here is my finished copy!
View

P.S. Most of this is your creativity! Don't let it get you down if you don't get it the first time! Practice :D

Tags: color, custom, effect

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 29th, 2008 at 8:03 PM and is filed under Photoshop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.