Re-coloring a Black and white Image
| Difficulty: Intermediate/Advance Photoshop |
Here is a pretty common tutorial, yet what makes this different from other coloring tutorials is a bit of realism that many coloring tutorials I bump into seem to miss. Now, many things in this tutorial are pretty much basic stuff that I'm pretty sure you already know or bound to read again in another tutorials. The idea here is to remember some key tips to further enhance your picture coloring abilities. Some maybe a little over the top, or easier than others, depends really on how you work with Photoshop, and the images you pick for re-coloring.
| Turn this: | Into this: |
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The angle of this image is a little weird, which is why I would work on her face a bit; a simple black block would work just great. The idea is to learn some new tips on coloring black and white images. Also faces can be a little tricky for beginners.
A little Fix up: So there's the block, and the desaturation. I added a bit of contrast that is totally optional to anyone turning an original color picture black and white. Contrast just adds a little life to the image. I cropped the image a little smaller, and that's it.
The Coloring: It's always easier for me to start with the smallest item, usually in the face area like the lips, eyes, inside mouth... that general area. So with this image I'm starting with the lips. Working with a size three brush, here is what I came up with:
As you can see I picked a dark color and set it to overlay. The blending of overlay helped just color the gray areas of the lips (the original color is #3A0000) if you feel that it's too dark, you can erase it and work with a different color, or just lower the opacity so you end up with a shade that you like best. The key here is to work with real colors, blue, bright pink, yellow, or black lips would look nasty, especially if done wrong. Stick to colors that can easily work well with a black and white image, along with the lighting. If you want to venture to bright odd colors make sure that your image can support it. The image I'm working with is too dark to look great with bright colors like yellow and pink. Here is a close shade to pink, Magenta:
Looks almost red (#57002B) yet this shade can somewhat go well with the contrast within this image, and its little things like that you need to take into account. Now we are going to work with the next part of the image and that's the next smallest bit, the teeth. Fact: regardless of how pearly white model's, celebrities' teeth may be, never use the color white when re-coloring the image. Perhaps gray, but that often pushes it. In reality shades like baby yellow and beige (light) often works best. Some people often leave this section uncolored, most of the time it looks fake and ugly. Color it!
Here is my version. I used baby yellow and messed with the opacity (24%), and blending mode. Overlay is usually what I stick with but color worked best.
You must be wondering why I went with a shade so dark, look at the edited version, the choice of colors will best match the tone of the image, it won't look like much with the skin color which will come soon.
Now let's work with her hair. While it's a large piece, her hair is well kept with little to no strays all over the place. This makes things much easier, and it's always great to take that into account, with stray hairs and a heavy background can make re-coloring images difficult. Especially if you're not steady with the mouse or tablet pen. Working with a size 9 brush and brown shade of #41291B, the blending at overlay here is my result:
Pretty basic, depending on the shade of hair you pick, it's possible to style it up a bit with highlights. I picked a dark shade yet again to work with the dark red lips. Next on the list is the skin, this is the most tricky especially if you don't have an original color image to start with. In this image I worked with a Dark layer and a Light layer. The Dark layer is color #DFD4CE with a blending mode of linear burn, and opacity of 35%. The next is a Light layer, with the color at #F5C9A6, opacity at 100% and blending mode at soft light. Alone these layers look odd and fake, together I tried to combine the two and lighten up the image a bit. Here is the result:
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Since I edited the image, desaturated it and added some contrast, the coloring of the skin looks a little weird. Many of you may not need 2 layers for the skin, unless the person is flushed in some parts or the lighting on the skin dramatically changes in some parts.
Next we go to the bracelet, this small item is quite simple... its one color: Gold. Aiming for a dark yellow, I went with color #B98E2F with the opacity at 100% and blending mode at overlay, here is the result.
Luckily for me this item is not only simple in shape but in color. If you find that your celebrity’s accessories are pretty dramatic and odd in shape, it helps if your steady with the mouse, or use a tablet, makes tracing these accessories much easier, and coloring much faster and fun.
Confused? comment below and I'll do my best to fix the problem.
