Adding Colors to Black and White Photos

 Tutorial from: http://www.fubargenre.com/2007/05/09/basic-photoshop-skill-adding-colors-to-black-and-white-photos/1/

Step 1: Backing Up Your Original Image

As always, you should start by duplicating your background layer (i.e., the layer with the original photo). Then, click the eye icon next to the background layer to make it invisible. By keeping a redundant copy, you can easily revert to the original image just in case you make some mistakes later on. Remember to click on your visible layer in the Layers palette to make it the active layer.

Tip: When working with multiple layers, it would be a pain to keep going back to the Layers palette to select a specific layer. A quick shortcut is to right-click on the element you’re working on and then select the layer name. This will automatically bring you to the layer of your choice.

Step 2: Choosing the Right Skin Tone

Skin tones vary, and there is no precise way to determine the hue/saturation values for a certain skin tone. You would have to trust your instinct here. Use your eye to gauge the closest, most realistic color. Since I’m very familiar with my own skin, it was pretty easy for me to come up with this:

I achieved this effect by first setting a light brown color as my Foreground. I then went to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation, clicked Colorize in the lower part of the window, and slid the slider across the Hue bar and the Saturation bar until I found what I thought was the appropriate shade. I did not see a need for Lightness adjustments because I felt that the light in this image was already perfect.

Note that the rest of the image has also turned a little orange-y. I did not pre-select my face and shoulders to limit the color adjustments. Instead, I waited until the last few steps to change the background and tweak the colors of the rest of the image. That’s just how I work. Perhaps you prefer to select the skin areas before modifying hue/saturation. That’s also correct. How I do things may not always be the easiest or the fastest. But these are my ways, and I’m most comfortable with them.

Step 3: Adding Make-Up

I rarely wear make-up, but I’m pretty sure I was wearing some when I had this photo taken. Besides, the whole orange thing made me look sickly, don’t you think? So, I decided to add some colors where appropriate.

I started with the lips. Using a soft brush with a small tip, I painted a bright red color across my previously pale lips. The end result was a little too shocking and entirely unattractive:

To fix this, I changed the Opacity to 23% and set the Blend Mode to Overlay.

This time, it looked like the kind of lipstick I would normally use.

Next stop was the cheeks. I again used the paint tool to brush on a pinkish shade on my cheeks. Notice that I didn’t even attempt accuracy in applying the blush. As a result, I ended up looking like a clown:

To make my face less comical, I set the Opacity of the blush layer to 33%. This time, I didn’t have to adjust the Blend Mode. I simply added a Layer mask and brushed over areas that I felt were too blotchy. The result was a more natural blush:

Now, it was time to play with the eyes (my most striking feature — or so they say. ahem). There wasn’t really a lot I needed to do here. But I just couldn’t resist adding a little eyeshadow. So, I brushed a dark brown color above my eyes:

And again adjusting the opacity and masking some areas, I reduced the contrasting effect to make the color blend with the rest of my face:

Step 4: Adding Color to the Background

Although the skin tone has been adjusted, and a few colors added to simulate make-up, the picture still looked bland. This was due mostly to the fact that the shade of the background was similar to the shade of the skin. There was a sense of color uniformity, and some dramatic variation was needed.

I went back to my original image, which at that time was still invisible, and duplicated that image. I then made the duplicated image visible and dragged it to the top of my Layers palette. The new, still black and white, image was now the top layer.

With the new layer as the active layer, I then set a tint of blue as my Foreground color. Then, I went to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation, and again played with the slider until I got this:

The background color was perfect, but I needed to get rid of that part of me covered in blue. So, I created a Layer Mask on my blue layer and masked out everything but the background. Once done, the changes I earlier made on the lower layers peeked through:

The image now looked like a colored photograph, with virtually no traces of its black and white origin.

Optional Step: Adding Little Details

The picture now looked perfect, but I was far from done. I wanted to bring out the color of my cheeks, so I changed the small ribbon on my dress to a pale shade of red. It’s not too obvious, but if you have a good eye, you can see the difference.

Next, I brushed a few red strokes on my hair to create the illusion of highlights. Again, the red is hardly visible, but the extra color gave my hair a little texture.

I then went back to my blue layer and masked out areas where I felt the blue was too much. I also went back to my “make-up” layers to tweak any detail that needed tweaking.

And then, finally, I was done.