colorize a black and white photo

[dogulas]

I searched but did not find a post about this.

I have an old black and white family photo that I scanned in. I would like to colorize parts of it such as the subject's face and hands and maybe their coat, leaving the rest of the photo in black and white. This is similar to an old practice of colorizing photos with colored pencils.

I tried creating a rastor image above the photo and selecting a region around the face and applying color, but that just wipes out the face. I tried it directly on the photo, with similar results. I'd like to keep all the greyscale shadows and features. It's as if I want the white to be transparent and to put the color on a layer beneath it.

Is there a best practices way of doing this? Is there a built in effect that I have missed? If there is a post that I missed, I welcome pointers.

Thanks,
dogulas

[df]

You've got the right idea, you'll want to create a raster layer but change the blend mode to Color or Color (Legacy), you can actually switch between the two later but I think you should start with Color (Legacy). Next you'll want to get the Mixer palette up, View > Palettes > Mixer. On the Mixer palette you can mix colors to load onto your brush, so if you want a skin tone that darkens to the right you'd put a skin tone on the Mixer sheet and put some black or dark gray to the right of it then use the Oil Brush or one of the art tools (last set of tools on the tools toolbar). When you select the middle of the color range you'll get the brush loaded with the mix that you see, skin tone on the left with the mixing coming in from the right. Turn off Auto Clean if you want to have the brush run out of paint.

If you lose too much details you have no shadows. Shadows define. You can duplicate the base layer, arrange it to the top, then turn the blend mode to Luminance or Darken or Overlay or just experiment.

Welcome to the wonderful world of layers. It's where the magic begins.

If your (now) topmost layer gives you some odd looking things over areas that you don't like you can either erase parts of that layer or look into using a mask layer. Mask layers are a group of layers that "hide" the sections that are masked black and show the sections that are masked white. Use the Flood Fill tool, the Air Brush tool, the Paint Brush tool, or any other tool that will give you the color you're looking for. You can even use a gradient from the flood fill or even the other tools.

OK, so there's enough to get you in trouble. You can look up the Help section for specifics on Layers, Mask Layers, Paint Brushes, etc.... but at least you have a clue as to how to get things going. Never work on the original image, always a copy or a save as. If you want to leave the project and retain your layers save the project as a PSPImage file in the Save As dialog. You won't be able to undo previous steps but you will still have your layers in tact, and if you're using mask layers you're really not erasing anything but just hiding what you don't want to show. Painting back over the mask layer with white reveals it again, painting with black hides it.

Try to have fun.

[dogulas]

Dan,

Thanks so much for the quick reply. I'll dive right in and try some of this. This is good info.

Thanks,
Dogulas

[LeviFiction]

Not just layers, but blend modes. Technically you can select a blend mode with the paint brush and avoid layers. But that is not recommended, in fact that's a terrible idea always use the layers.

Some small quick tips. I'm working on the artmedia tools tutorials now so in addition to the suggestion about the mixer palette I should explain how the sampling works.

First, only the oil brush and palette knife (none of the others) allow multiple color selection for the materials. So all other art media tools won't give you the effect df talked about with the fading color.

Secondly the sample size for the oil brush and palette knife is directly tied to the actual eye dropper tool. Not the eydropper in the mixer palette, those are two different tools. Don't ask me why, it just is.

So first select your eye-dropper tool from the toolbar and look at the tool options palette. If the sample size is the default 1x1 you won't get fading colors you'll only get a single straight color. So you're going to want to bump that up a bit. I find the 5x5 works well enough unless you need a larger area.

With the oil brush selected on the toolbar move your mouse over the mixer palette and select the eye dropper. While the size for the dropper is different between the two, you still need to select this eye-dropper to sample from the palette. How you know it will select multiple colors is it will have a circle around the dropper. Now if you click and look in the materials palette you'll see how the colors fade from one to the other.

It's these little quirks that will frustrate people their first time trying it out. Hope this helps add to what Df said. Good luck.

[df]

Great addition Levi, thanks.

[teknisyan]

Hello dogulas,

Here's a great tutorials that will also help you with your project. Restore Faded Photos: http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/ ... 5942844881

[dogulas]

Thanks everyone. These are some great suggestions and feedback. I actually tried some stuff and it turned out pretty well so I thought I would give the readers the step by step method that worked for me.

*) My black and white image is on the background.
*) I made a new raster layer on top of it.
*) I made a new mask to mask the raster layer. I selected create by image and selected the original image. I also selected Invert mask data. This created a layer group with my raster layer on the bottom and the inverted image as a mask above.
*) I temporarily made the mask invisible and selected the raster layer with the background also visible.
*) I had to promote the raster image to 8bit color, otherwise I could only paint in greytone.
*) Using the image on the background, I painted a region such as the coat with a solid color using the airbrush. I completely covered the area which looked opaque.
*) When I set the mask visible again, it let all the shadows and details of the original image show through.

Of course it would look better if I had any artistic tendencies, but if I do say so myself, it looks just like one of those old hand colored pictures.

Happy coloring.

Thanks,
Dogulas

[dogulas]

In the next to last bullet, I meant to say I used the image on the background as a guide. I painted on the raster layer.

Thanks,
Dogulas

[df]

Wow Douglas, you really dug in. Glad to see it's working for you.

[ronzie]

I used to wet process prints as B&W and paint with transparent oil colors. One tip I gained for portrait work was to tone the print to sepia first to warm all the shadow/gray tones. That can reduce the color mixes required.

I suggest in PSPP convert a B&W image to gray scale and then apply the color tool of your choice to warm the whole image or just the selected flesh areas before applying color with transparent tools.