Photoshop: How do I introduce color or change the color of a photo?

Hate to say it, but there's no easy solution to this.

The magic wand tool will work in some areas - like the eyes.

You can also try Select -> Color Range. Each of those will select an area based on an area of gray. Plus, you can adjust the sensitivity of the selection (i.e. how much of a range of grays to select). I'd suggest playing around with this a bit.

Once you have an area selected to your satisfaction, fill it with a new color (Option+delete).

I don't envy the task you have in front of you. May I ask specifics on what you're planning on doing?

Well for one, colorizing a photo can be done a multitude of ways. I found that making a new layer on top of the B/W photo set to color (change normal to color) works. All that does is turns a grey scale to whatever color you put on top. I've done a photo like this once. Came out OK. Not the greatest way to do it. Check some websites out on photoshop techniques. I always learn from them.

To change someone's eye color, just select the colored part of the eye, and choose the image menu, then adjustments, and then hue/saturation. Just adjust the sliders to get a color you like. You can also hit colorize, which turns the image Black and white and then adds 1 solid scale of color. Just experiment.

These are not simple, beginning photoshop tasks. I picked up the skills by just messing around and taking a couple of classes.

well, i would use the pen tool, the lasso tool, or the quick mask button, to select the areas i need. If you don't know how to use any of those, do some googling...you'll find some help with that.

Then, once everything is selected, do Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Photo Filter. That gives you something that lets you pick and choose what color you need applied to the object. If you've made a selection, it will use that selectiong as a mask, so it only does that part of the image. Making it an Adjustment Layer, is just a cleaner way to do it, because you can always go back and easily change what you did.

-je

Try this tutorial. It is the best I have seen on adding color to a b/w photo.

http://psdtuts.com/photo-effects-tutorials/awesome-photorealistic-coloring-techniques/

what i do is take a color photo then use the polygon tool to cut out the segment i want color then make a layer. now you will have the photo minus the color designated part which you can make b&w

combine the layers and voila

Recolored

I've had some good success with this program in its beta:

http://www.recolored.com/

Very easy to use and pretty good results.

first of all if its the colour of the overal photo you want to change, it can be done a number of ways.
Firstly using hue&saturation sliders: image> adjustments> hue/saturation. There are sliders in this option that are quite helpful.
Secondly would be using duotone, which limits you to four colours: Image> Mode> greyscale. then Image> Mode> Duotone, this brings out a window where you can chose up to 4 colours to replace the black and white.

If it was individual parts of the image you wanted to change, I would suggest using the lasso tool, or magic wand (depending on what it is you want to change). select the desired area, and while its selected repeat the steps above..

hope this helps, im sure there are many more ways but this would be the way I would go about it

While you're in layers, don't forget to make a copy of your original layout, so you can edit from there if needed.

macworkerbee said:

Try this tutorial. It is the best I have seen on adding color to a b/w photo.

http://psdtuts.com/photo-effects-tutorials/awesome-photorealistic-coloring-techniques/

Click to expand...

Excellent tutorial. Thanks for sharing!

macworkerbee said:

Try this tutorial. It is the best I have seen on adding color to a b/w photo.

http://psdtuts.com/photo-effects-tutorials/awesome-photorealistic-coloring-techniques/

Click to expand...

It is AMAZING. I mean 10 out of 10. Ditto, I agree. Wow.

-jim

onegirlcreative said:

Excellent tutorial. Thanks for sharing!

Click to expand...

SrWebDeveloper said:

It is AMAZING. I mean 10 out of 10. Ditto, I agree. Wow.

-jim

Click to expand...

No problem! Glad I can help some other designers out.

Another way, which has a very distinct look, and is actually fun to do... is get your B&W image and set the layer blend to Multiply. Then create a new layer underneath this and just paint on there. All the white bits from the original image will show the color underneath. To make it more interesting you can adjust the threshold levels and contrast levels on the image.