How can I add color to a black and white digital image?

Question

I have Paint Shop Pro 8 and Adobe Photoshop. Please dont tell me to read tutorials or go to a specific web site unless it gives step by step. Also, if you dont know, I'll just assume so by you not responding.

Thanks for your HELP!

Answer 1

In PhotoShop

Create your selection of the item you want to color

Copy to new layer (Layers, new via copy)

Pick a brush

paint the selection on a separate layer

Set the layer option to Color

If you are more comfortable with brushes and such,you can paint directly on the black and white (or a new layer)

This way you will likely have to touch up some of the edges, this can be done in a few ways, either feather your selection once you have made it, or zoom in really close, use a small brush with low flow and opacity and fill in the areas gradually. The picture at the top of the page below is one I did, it took about 20 hours in total (including restoring it), the selection of the bar alone took 2.5 hours. Incidentally, the images shown are web resolution, the one I did was blown up to 2 X 3.5 feet, so I spent a lot of time getting the edges just right, they wouldn't have shown in a web res file, but they would on the poster it was blown up to.

http://www.savitardesigns.com/Pages/PhotoShop.asp

Answer 2

tutorials suck basically, they only tell you WHAT it does --not how to do it. In photoshop you have the picture onscreen and then go into the file menu that tells you if you are in grey tones or rgb
as the photo is already grey tones you click on rgb you will get no colour if you stay in grey
then you go to th e brightness and
contrast and check everything is ok there and then you go down to colour hue saturation and somewhere in there is a colourize command from t hen on you select with eyedropper all areas of equal values and t hen follow up the fuzzies and just experimrnt
it is all in the same list of things you can do but you have to play with ir and it is as time consuming s fine embroidery. It comes just underneathcolour correcton ans light and contrast list. I dont have my photoshop anymore it is on my mac and I cant afford to get another version but I learned NOTHING from the tutorials I would have learned more from someone sitting with me for a couple of hours.anyway you have to play with these thingsas they are very artistic. but you can get some very good results

Answer 3

To tint the picture uniformly, pull down the Image menu, choose Adjust, and in the sub-menu choose Hue/Saturation. There's a check box labeled Colorize.

To 'watercolor' over the picture (to color just a flower, for example) make a new layer, then set the layer's opacity to a percentage and start painting. Or, set the paint brush's opacity instead.

Above all, experiment. Whether you read the manual or not.

Answer 4

If the picture was converted to black and white in photoshop I know there is a way to do that, but only if its save as .psd. If you scanned a old picture I seriously doubt any program will do that.

Answer 5

Use image processing toolbox of MATLAB, ADOBE Photoshop