colourize certain areas in b&w photo

C
Posted By
canadian
Nov 24, 2003
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409
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9
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new to working with photoshop ,so not very familiar with it yet .i have seen some pics that have certain areas colourized ie: eyes ,lips .hair etc and the rest of pic remains in b&w ,was wondering how this is done.im just staring out so anyone who can tell me how please do in detail lol ..many thanks

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RK
Rob_Keijzer
Nov 24, 2003
Hi Canadian,

I once did this by using desaturate, and then use the history brush to paint back the colours in certain parts of the image.

If the image was a B&W in the first place, then make it RGB, select parts you want to colour, then colorize.

Rob
CW
Colin_Walls
Nov 24, 2003
I would create an adjustment layer – Hue & Saturation – and use that to desaturate the image. I would then place a mask on that layer and block off the parts I don’t want desaturated by painting on the mask in black. The nice thing is that you can partly "resaturate" some areas, if you wish, by painting with <100% opacity.
S
SimRacer
Nov 24, 2003
wrote in message
new to working with photoshop ,so not very familiar with it yet .i have
seen some pics that have certain areas colourized ie: eyes ,lips .hair etc and the rest of pic remains in b&w ,was wondering how this is done.im just staring out so anyone who can tell me how please do in detail lol ..many thanks

One way that I do it is to start with a color image and make the parts of the image B+W that I don’t want to appear in color. I don’t have my cheat sheet in front of me, but it involves copying the background layer, and possibly changing the layer mode to multiply (?), changing the foreground brush color to black and painting the areas (on that layer) with a large, soft edged brush and where you paint, will become B+W leaving the background image alone so anything you *don’t* paint, will remain in color. If you make a mistake, change the foreground brush color from black to white and it will *undo* the portion you aren’t happy with, showing it in full color again as you paint over it.

If the image was B+W to start with, then I can’t help you. My digital camera only does color and I have to *make* B+W images from the color images. BTW I got this tip from the Scott Kelby book ‘The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers’. It’s pretty good for photographers moving from the real dark room to the Photoshop dark room if you will, but is probably old news to Photoshop users that have been doing it a while.
JM
Jesse_McCarthy
Nov 25, 2003
I’d use Colin’s technique if you’re starting out with a color photo. I once colorized a black and white photo pretty convincingly by painting solid colors onto layers over the photograph and setting the blending mode of those layers to color.
P
Phosphor
Nov 25, 2003
New to Photoshop?

The first, best thing for you to learn, understand and internalize is this:

Photoshop is ALL about making accurate selections. There are many ways to make accurate selections, and the trick is in knowing which technique to use for a particular situation, or which techniques to combine, so that you isolate everything you want to affect with a further manipulation from the image areas you want to leave unchanged.

Learn how to create excellent selections, and most of the rest of it is pretty easy.
JP
Jay_Porter
Nov 25, 2003
Well, I’m no pro at Photoshop so this is probably not a great way to do this, but it has worked for me, and as everyone knows: there are always six hundred ways to do something in Photoshop!

1. I would open up and save two copies of the same picture. Take one copy and desaturate it (Image:Adjust:Desaturate) or turn it into a grayscale picture (Image:Mode:Grayscale). Now you have one copy that is black and white and the other should still be in color.

2. Make sure that both pictures are open and you can see them in your Photoshop work area. If your Layers panel isn’t open, open it (Window:Show Layers). Select the black and white picture. Click on the layer in the layer panel with your b+w picture and drag and drop it into the window with your color picture. This should add a layer to your color picture.

3. Ensure that your B+W picture layer is above your color picture layer. Now if both pictures are the same size (you haven’t resized one or the other), you should be able to lock the top layer in B+W directly over the color picture.

4. Now with your eraser tool and the b+w picture layer selected, erase the portions of the picture that you want colorized. This will erase your b+w layer and expose the color picture below it.

This is probably a long winded post, and maybe some of the pro’s won’t agree with my methods, but I’ve done this a few times in the past and it has worked really well. Granted, I don’t know how to use masks or some of the other methods mentioned above very well and I am still learning, but this was a method that I learned on my own and figured out for myself – that is the great thing about Photoshop!
SG
shecky_greene
Nov 25, 2003
..Now you have one copy that is black and white and the other should
still be in color.

But this would pre-suppose there was a colour image to begin with. It sounded like the original poster has a black and white image that wanted to have only certain parts colourized.

There’s an interesting colorizing tutorial here:
http://faq.ozoneasylum.com/79/rating/

The same concepts would be applied to specific area, but at Phosphor points out, the art of selection is extremely important.
C
canadian
Nov 25, 2003
thanks for all the replys .i read shecky greene answer and hes got what im try to do . what i’m trying to do is say u have a a b&w white pic is to colour the eyes or just lips or may a peice of clothing . i have a b&w pic that i want to do this to for my desktop background .

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