Colorize black and white photos

[daddog]

Tried a search in the help file in Paint Shop Pro X3, but could not come up with anything. Is that an option/tool it has?

Thanks in advance.

[LeviFiction]

There is....and there isn't. It's not like the tool was designed for black and white colorization but it can be used that way.

Of course there are lots of other options that give you a lot more control as well.

The tool itself is called the Change To Target Brush: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HAQOmISNgM

You can see how I used the tool in that tutorial. Unlike the method I'm going to describe next, the Change To Target brush requires that you paint directly on the image. This changes actual pixels and may or may not ruin things. So while it's possible to use this tool only there are better more flexible methods.

If you use this tool I recommend you duplicate the layer first so that you're not working on the original in case something goes wrong.

This next method is more common among the different programs.

Create a new raster layer above the image. Change the blend mode to either Color or Burn (You can try others but these two are the most recommended).

Now grab the color you want to color with and with the paint-brush start painting on the new raster layer. You'll see it take on the color that you give it, and it's actually recommended that you create a separate raster layer for each color so that you can make changes to it quickly using any of the color adjust options.

Doing a quick search on YouTube I found a tutorial that shows this method fairly well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-WHb2I93YQ

Quick note: I don't recommend using the Merge option until you're done....or at all really. Save a copy as a PSPImage so that if you want to come back and make adjustments later you can. And also save out a copy as a JPG and this will do the merging for you. This way you don't ruin the actual image, and if you screw up you can fix it as you go.

[daddog]

Thank you for your time. I appreciate the detailed response.

I will check those out.

[Simone Corel UK]

@ LeviFiction

I'm always surprised and full of respect for how our users work with our software. While reading the question, I immediately thought the same as your second video link shows. Your video shows the "Charge to Target" tool and I admit, I have never tried it before. Many thanks for your video