Colorizing Grayscale Photos
If you enjoy the look of hand-tinted photographs but don't want to deal with the chemicals and mess that are usually involved, then you might get excited enough about some of Photoshop's features to make you want to drop your brush and start colorizing your images with a mouse.
You can use a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to add color to a black and white image. All you have to do is choose Image > Mode > RGB, select one of the areas you'd like to add color to, and create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. With this choice, you'll first need to turn on the Colorize check box, which should shift the selected area to a color similar to your foreground color (Figure 10.30).
Figure 10.30. When you first turn on the Colorize check box, the color you'll get is based on your foreground color. (©2005 Stockbyte, www.stockbyte.com)
 | I'll show you another method for colorizing grayscale images when we talk about the Color Replacement Brush and Match Color command later in this chapter. |
When the color has been applied, you can adjust the Hue setting to cycle through the full spectrum of colors. Once you've chosen the basic color, you can adjust the Saturation setting to control how vivid the color is, and change the Lightness setting to determine how dark the area should be (Figure 10.31).
Figure 10.31. You can fine-tune the color by adjusting the Hue, Saturation, and Lightness sliders.
With this select-and-adjust approach, you'll need to create a new adjustment layer for each color you'd like to use (Figure 10.32). After you've created an adjustment layer, you can fine-tune the result by painting with black or white while the adjustment layer is active. Painting with white will cause the adjustment to apply to a larger area of the image, whereas black will limit which areas get adjusted. If you find that the color is too intense, then simply paint with a shade of gray on the adjustment layer, which will cause the adjustment to apply in differing amounts. The darker the shade of gray, the less the adjustment will apply. You can also double-click on the thumbnail icon for the adjustment layer (to the left of the name of the layer) to modify the settings that are being applied.
Figure 10.32. As you apply color to more and more areas, you'll end up with a lot of adjustment layers.
What you want to watch out for with this type of adjustment is that there will usually be way too much color in the darkest and brightest areas of your image (Figure 10.33). To limit the amount of color applied to these areas, you'll need to use the blending sliders by choosing Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options while the adjustment layer is active. Then pull in the lower-left slider in the Blend If area until you notice all the color disappearing from the darkest areas of your image. You don't want to completely remove the color, so hold the Option key (Mac) or Alt key (Windows) and pull on the left edge of the slider that you just moved until you get a smooth transition in the shadow areas of your image. Then, before you click OK, move the right slider a short distance and then Option-drag (Mac) or Alt-drag (Windows) its right edge until the color blends into the brightest parts of the image. With a little experimentation, you'll be able to find the setting that looks best for your image (Figures 10.34 and 10.35).
Figure 10.33. There is too much color in the darkest areas of this image. (©2005 Stockbyte, www.stockbyte.com)
Figure 10.34. These are the blending slider settings used to create Figure 10.35.
Figure 10.35. After reducing the amount of color in the shadow areas, the image looks more realistic.
