PHOTOSHOP TUTORIAL: Photo Colourisation, How to convert Black and White photography to Color
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 พ.ค. 2024
- In this video, I show you how I colour old photographs using Adobe Photoshop. Whether you're working to bring life to precious family portraits or if you'd just like to see historical photos brought into the modern era, this video is for you!
My non destructive editing method broadly involves using Photoshop layer masks and color blend modes, along with some subtle contrast and lighting adjustments using curves adjustment layers. I also look at Photoshop's amazing 'Blend If' tool.
I made a companion tutorial where I restored the heavily damaged photograph that I used for this video. It can be found here if you're interested: • PHOTOSHOP TUTORIAL: Ph...
More can be found about the original photograph here: www.loc.gov/item/2016708602/
I think colourisation can be a brilliant way to help people connect with the past. To see colourised pictures, including the one featured in this video, you can follow me at the following:
/ jbcolourisation
/ jbcolourisation
/ jbcolourisation
#Colourisation #Photoshop #Restoration #Repair #'Restore
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Thank you, finally I understand “blend if” with your explanation.
That's so nice to hear, thank you for letting me know! it took me absolutely ages to fully understand Blend-If, so it;s nice to hear i helped! :)
Just wanted to leave a comment to appreciate the quality of this tutorial, good work mate.
Thank you so much! I really appreciate your comment. :)
Do you also work with PSP X9? Excellent tutorial.
Can only say the same, Great Work!
fantastic job, bottom line of this tutorial is that from the scratch he is explaining everything, you don't have to know photoshop, he is teaching even basics - he is sincere as a teacher-He deserves a big salute- this is how tutorial should be.
I don't respond to enough comments on here as i should do, but i saw this one and immediately had to. I aim to hopefully have a lot more tutorials going up on this channel soon and comments like this really encourage me to make more, thank you! :)
@@JBColourisation much love :)
You're an absolutely brilliant teacher and a better colorisation artist. Following your clear indications I am colorising photos of my greatgrandparents with their children, pictures from about 1914 and 1919. It will be a great surprise for my family to see their ancestors come alive the way you brought this beautiful Victorian lady back to life. I cannot thank you enough for your tutorial.
You're very welcome indeed, I'm glad it was of help! It makes me really happy to think of people using this tutorial to help people connect to their ancestors in the way your describe. :)
Will try to follow your tutorial, looks really easy to follow and hopefully soon I'll have the time to go through. Cheers!
Great video, very informative
Brilliantly explained James!! This colorisation is so new to me. I learned so much with this amazing tutorial, and have much more to learn from you. Thank you so much!!
Yep , this video is pure gold !
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and technique!
Thank you for this video. It was extremely helpful.
Awesome video, I leaned a lot from it, so I subscribed right away. Cheers mate.👍😀
This was extraordinary! Thank you for this amazingly detailed tutorial, and, gasp, “blend it”!!! LIfe-changing!
This is nuts! I’ve always really wanted to try this but I’m glad I didn’t go in blindly. Amazing job! I’m in architecture so I have to work with a few programs but I love PS but I feel like Ill never be on this level.
Just wow.
Hi, thank you for this tutorial. I just repaired a photo from 1918 of a young woman. They want it in colour but I have never done this. I am working with your tutorial now. So thank you! I hope I make a good pic lol :-)
your a brilliant teacher hope to learn more from you
Watched several photo colorization videos and this is the absolutely perfect tutorial... Thank you so much for sharing this technique! ❤❤❤
I love this. At the very least it demonstrates the concept of "the more I learn about Photoshop, the more I realize how much I don't know." I feel like these are the basic concepts that every user should know. I understand them when I think about it, or when you explain them, but it isn't intuitive yet at all. I guess that is where repetition and practice come in. Thanks for this.
fabulous lesson, thank you very much.
thank u sir, this tutorial take my colourisation to another level, i'm very thankfull
An excellent example - clear and of highly professional explanation of the project of such complexity.
Great tutorial. Thank you for creating and sharing... Subscribed.
Great tutorial. I have definitely picked up some good tips to improve my own colorization work.
As far as tips, I saw a video a while back where they achieved their color variation of skin tones using gradient masks with the values set based on the brightness levels. Might be something you could play around with to improve your work flow.
Keep up the good work and content.
You are so amazing!!! You've made me love Photoshop again!!!!! THANK YOU!!!! 🤝🤝🤝🤝
You are an artist!
Outstanding!! Thank you so much for this outstanding tutorial! I'm having fun with this. AND, thank you for turning us on to the Library of Congress as a source for practice images.
Thank you so much for this tutorial!! Amazing!
You're very welcome, I'm glad it was of use. :)
You are both skillful as an artist and as a teacher. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your tutorials.
Thank you so much, that's very kind of you to say! :)
Really awesome work, man. Clear, succinct, approachable... Good stuff.
Thank you so much! :D
That was a excellent lesson on colourisation, well described and easy to follow and understand.
Thank you very much! :D
Thanks! Great teacher.
Best coloring tut on yt. Masterclass. This proves that things get as good as the amount and thought and time one puts into it.
Thank you very much indeed!
Thank you so much,we still in lock down, so I go to learn this, to watch your great vidio
I have to say that this is the single best tutorial on colorizing (not colonizing, thanks Grammarly!) humans I have seen, by far. So thorough and insightful re every aspect of skin tones. Just following it makes not only for a perfect result, but for a deeper understanding of what and why you are doing. Very, very good stuff!
Wow, what a fab in depth run through, you are really talented. well done, learned a lot, thank you.
I'm glad to hear it was useful! Thank you very much. :)
Really like your videos. Learn a lot about retouching photos and coloring in Photoshop in your videos.
Hope you have some more tutorials on coloring and adjusting the clarity of old photos, thank you. Hope you happy everyday.
State of the art work, thanks for sharing, I just discovered you,This is my favorite colorization I ever watched, Muchas gracias desde México. Liked and subscribed and the bell thing too
Thank you very much indeed! All of those things really help to build up the channel :).
Great tutorial, many thanks
Thank you for the tips friend. Much appreciated.
My pleasure! :)
This channel needs to blow up with this level of quality! Awesome work!!!
Thank you so much! I have some more videos planned which i'm quite excited about, so we'll see! :)
Fantastic work and thanks so much for sharing your hints, tips and shortcuts etc. I have some old family photographs that I will be doing over the next year and this tutorial will help immensely!
Thank you very much! If you run into anything that this tutorial doesn't cover, feel free to ask and I'll see if I can help further. :)
@@JBColourisation I ran across this video and thought of you and your color palettes while you colourize. See the following TH-cam video from a Photoshop instructor: "AMAZING New Photoshop Feature Adobe Hid From You! - Capture in Libraries" - I didn't want to add the link as it goes wonky sometimes. If you go to approx 6:00 into the video the fellows talks about making color swatches from the image using Adobe Capture. It looked intriguing to pull colors from historic color images to use in colourization and have them neatly arranged and accessible. I hope this helps! :)
Holy cow! That is amazing.
Thank you so much! :)
gracias. tu trabajo es hermoso.
I am impressed. I got the inspiration to sort out old family photos. I'm watching the video for the third time and I admire your methodology. I'm starting processing my photos tonight. Greetings
Thank you so much! Good luck with the family photos and if you have any follow up questions feel free to ask them! :)
Just amazing knowledge sir, thank you for sharing.
Thank you very much indeed! :D
Brilliant video, many thanks for sharing very helpful and informative.
Thank you! And thanks for letting me know it was helpful! :)
Excellent tutorial
First class job! I am going to spend some of this 'lockdown time' learning new skills. I have just got a 2nd monitor so I can watch and pause YT whilst working away trying to emulate your efforts. Going to be here some considerable time I fear.
I'm glad to hear that this video is helping out! A second monitor is definitely the best way to go about these with something on to let you go into relaxation/work mode, I also use audio books when i have to use the second screen for close up details checking or for a second constantly zoomed out view! (Which to create for the record for anyone interested, you can go to 'Window -Arrange- and 'New window for "File name"' and then drag that new tab it onto the second screen.) The second monitor can also be super useful to check the colours of your work on more devices. My right screen was designed to be a TV really and it's notably more yellow for example, despite me trying to balance them as best I can. J :)
This video is very informative and thorough Thank you!
Thank you so much indeed, I really appreciate your comment! :)
Dude this is amazing, how did you even learn to do this? This is like genius level.
Thank you so much! I'd had Photoshop experience before but I gained a lot of knowledge about colourisation from the community at r/colorization on Reddit. They're a really good place to show off work and ask for feedback. :)
@@JBColourisation Thanks for the reply man, might be really cool to see how I can do this.
I've been looking for this kind of tutorial. thanks......
You're very welcome!
Excellent work. Your process is very clear. I would like to offer one suggestion. Straight black & white images tend to be cool which needs to be adjusted for portraiture. Before you begin to colorize the photo, I like to to start with a slightly warmer image. Therefore I sepia tone the image first, then begin to colorize. This is the way that was recommended to me before digital, and it is especially best for portraits.
you are simply a " treasure "
Many Many thanks dear James, you have helped me a lot by critical steps! Greeting from Venice.. Ciao
I'm very glad the video was helpful, thanks for your comment! :)
This is amazing work. One of the most professional colorization i ever see. Great job man i hope i will be good at this like you in some point of my life lol. I am trying to be good at this particular thing because i like restoring and coloring old photos but my work is no where near yours of course. Bow down. Legend
Thank you so much, that's very kind of you to say! I was really not happy with my work at all when I first started and practice definitely makes a big difference! I tend to think if you're, healthily, critical of your own work that's the most important element to improvement, so i'm sure you're on the right path to get where you want to with this! :)
absolutely brilliant. probably a bit too fussy for me, i tend to bodge, but a master class delivered very clearly. i learnt quite a few decent photoyshop skills. thanks very much.
Thank so much! Yes when planning this tutorial I wasn't 100% sure on the best approach but I eventually settled on just showing my fullest possible process, in terms of steps and hoping that people would hopefully find at least some parts of it helpful, i'm glad that you did! :)
@JBColourisation Thanks a lot, your video gave me some further inspiration what I can do to pimp up my colorations, like the blurred orange dots. :-) One tip from my experience: It can be helpful (for those who are not sure) to split up a reference image into HSV (or HSL) and look only at the hue layer. It gives a very good impression of where the skin is rather orange and where rather pinkish. You were quite right with your positioning around eyes and mouth and I am very happy to see someone who really understands the matter making a tutorial video about it. Unfortunately that's not always the case. :-( Thumbs up!
WOW , this is all i can say .. i can not find the right words to express how beautiful, amazing and magnificent this work is ..Thanks, it helps a lot 👌👏👏
Thank you so much for taking the time to say such kind words! :)
Best tutorial , I like it. I have subcribed and Like !. Thanks . Have a good day .
Love these tutorials!! Thank you so much. I am struggling to find the "Blending if" tool on the updated PS Elements 2021. Can you tell me where to find it? It is no longer within FX.
Brilliant work, thank you
Thanks! :)
I started coloring only two months ago and have watched dozens of video tutorials. Plus I belong to several FB groups teaching the subject. Of all the videos and individual techniques I've watched and tried to learn, your one video pulls it all together for me. Your explanations and examples are clear to understand, although still complex at my present level. With time, I'm sure I can learn your techniques. I'm happy and excited to have found your tutorials. I've subscribed and look forward to more. Thank you for taking the time to make these videos.
I'm very glad they were of help! If you find yourself having any trouble, at all, with anything in my videos, please let me know in these comments and I'll try and assist! :)
It is a huge learning curve but I'm getting there.
@@artphaneuf9969 Hello there friend, how are you doing on coloring? I just start learning this.
Your tutorials are brilliant! This is helping me to recolor some historical family photos I inherited. I am familiar with photoshop for illustration purposes, but I was a bit lost with the restoration and recolorization. I'm using the AI features a bit, but really I don't think it's replaced doing the job by hand... at least not just yet!
Have you ever tried using solid color adjustment layers? I find these are helpful in my illustration process because I can change the exact color at any time. I find this easier than adding a hue/saturation adjustment, but perhaps it is just my habit. Anyway, it might be something to toy around with!
Like and subscribed. This is sooooooo much better than all the lazy colorists using AI. The artist has far more control and can easily make subtle adjustments if required. More power to you.
Thanks for this video. I've done some very basic colourising of photos in the past, but have always struggled to get the skin tones right. Will have to give your technique a try to see if I can achieve some better results!
Thank you! If you run into any issues with it feel free to comment back and i'll see what i can do! :)
Well done Sir! Can I just say, how much I enjoyed your videos. Your attention to detail and knowledge is brilliant! I have watched a few folk, and you have the best approach to this. Thank you for your help! Take care! Keep up the great work! You deserve way more views and subscribers.
Thank you very much indeed for your lovely comment! I have lots of plans for future videos, so hopefully you and ever more people will enjoy them. :)
@@JBColourisation you're very welcome Sir! You deserve it! I'm looking forward to watching more of your videos!
I have been studying this process for a while and you have some great information here!!! I will be returning to this video a lot! One thing that I would probably do different would be using solid color adjustment layers to make it easier to adjust colors.
Thank you very much! Yes I think that would indeed be an improvement, thank you for suggesting it! :) I may be a bit trapped in my ways now as I tend to do a lot of this on auto-pilot and adjusting my own method may take longer than the time i'd save at this point. However, if i do an updated version of this I'll try and remember to use that method.
@@JBColourisation You're welcome!! Our 'own methods' work for us!! Just a suggestion, for those who hadn't thought of it. We do what works best for us!! Great job!
I recently had a go at colouring a black and white image for the relative, unfortunately I saw another tutorial before attempting it and this video blows it out of the water with the quality of information
Best video on making the most realistic coloring that I have ever seen. However you really have to have some patience to do this.
I need to bookmark this video. It is very detailed. I have to watch it a few more times in slow motion. 🤓
Yes I think i may have over stuffed it a bit :S. If you have any follow up questions for any parts which i didn't cover in enough depth, feel free to leave a comment. I try and answer them all! :)
Been re-watching this great tutorial again as a 'refresher' as i'm about to colorize some old historic portrait photos. I was wondering if you still use the same techniques for the skin tones and hair and whether you used it for your 'US Presidents' ?
Nicely done my dude!
Cheers! :)
the best tutorial.Congratulations
Thank you so much! :D
Great work! glad you uploaded this as my family recently asked me to restore a photo of my great grand father. perfect timing.
question time saving tip that works with your process, when creating a new layer mask, click the layer mask icon while holding the alt or option (mac) key and it creates a new layer mask in black. Thanks for the quality content. Cheers.
WOWSA! Thank you so much for both the lovely comment and that absolutely brilliant time saving tip. I just tested it out and I can see that's going to be really useful for me. Ha that's both the best and worst thing about making tutorials is that i'm learning loads of ways to improve my methods from the comments but also lots of little ways I could make this video better! I'll have to remember these if i do an updated version. :)
I had the basics of photo restoration, but I wanna make it more pro and work on it, get jobs with it, because I really like it, and you're such a wonderful teacher, thank you so much! I hope you can upload more videos, I've been enjoying them.
Also, how do you decide on colors where you have no clue (like family telling you "yeah my grandma had green eyes so this should be colorized with green eyes")? Are there any clues you can take from the monochromatic picture? I mean, of course you can easily tell if the eyes where a dark or light color, with the hair too most of the times, but how do you decide on the color? There are light browns that can be confused for blond hair for example, stuff like that.
Quarantine's Got Color!
I'm also locked down in a foreign country and don't have any idea when I'll get home. I'm making good use of my time learning this skill.
I'm sorry to hear that you can't get home at the moment :( and also very honoured that it's my videos you're choosing to learn from during this time! :)
@@JBColourisation Thank you, James.
I remember learning this in high school. I wish I had gotten into it. Looks like fun.
Brilliant
Loved watching your process! The only thing bugging me is do you think the straight line we can see in the eyes is a reflector? in which case shouldn't it be (near) white rather than the blue of the eye?
I am a huge fan of your work James! Thank you so much for all of your detailed tutorials! They are amazing.
How do you create custom color pallets that you can save? Also any tips on how you find your reference images for the variety of different skin tones? Thank you again!
Thank you very much! I must say I don't tend to use custom palettes very often but I do know the method for handling them which i'll put here now. So up in the top right is the 'Swatches' tab. If it's not you can bring it up under Window-Swatches. With the 'Swatches' panel open you can load and save Pallet profiles along with creating new ones using the drop down arrow. In that same menu you can delete colour swatches you don't want, using the preset manager, and in the main Swatches window you can add new swatches based on the current eyedrop picked colour with the letter paper icon. A neat trick, which I would highly recommend if you want to approach the work in this method, is to save colour Swatches from colour images to use as reference. If you load up a colour image in a new project, then go to File - Save to Web, this would be the usual process for saving out web jpegs and such. However, if you change the preset save out mode to 'Gif 128 No Dither' it will convert and simplify your colour image to a maximum of 128 colours and give you a colour table of those 128 Swatches. You can then save out this colour table, from the drop down arrow and load it into the main Swatches panel as mentioned earlier. you'll have to locate the file and change the file type to 'Color Table' as i don't think Photoshop was 100% designed for this exchange but it works! (Fun Bonus Fact! The original purpose for this was for brands to export colour table charts to guarantee exact colours between adverts and such) let me know if this doesn't work for any reason! As I say, it's not something i use very often. AND FINALLY for references, I usually spend ages searching for good references, the only advice I can really give is to get in the habit of saving any good reference images you stumble upon, even if not actively working on that type of image. :)
@@JBColourisation Wow thank you so much!!!!!!!
Incredible!
Thank you! :)
thanl you so much man its really good!! thanks
Thank you! And thank you for watching! :)
@@JBColourisation Np :P
Hi! I’ve never used photoshop in my life, but said I would help my gf colorize a photo for her class. This video not only got me aquatinted with the app and it’s various gadgets, but also helped me to finish the project. And I think I did a dang good job! This is an amazing tutorial, thank you so much!
Thank you so much, I'm very glad to hear it helped you both. It's always nice to hear when people have benefited from my videos :)
That’s soo cool
Great job thank
Stupendous! very informative and nice tutorial just it's a little faster tutorial on a novice like me,
I will have to play the video many times till I fully understand it, thank you very much for your great efforts :)
Thank you very much! Sorry if I rushed anything, if you have any additional questions please ask them here and I'll see if i can assist. :) J
@@JBColourisation Thank you so much for your kindness :)
very useful video and very interesting. Also the subtitles are great
Thanks George!
Parabéns! lindo trabalho.
Thank You! :D
best way to make this a helluva LOT faster is learn how to paint with that drawing tablet you have. And that isn't hard, my teacher (image manipulation teacher) wants us to follow the steps found in the video lol, this is gonna take a while.
edit: forgot to say thanks, I had to watch the restoration vid and this one. It was interesting and satisfying to hear you being pleased while enjoying the work of your hands
Inspired me to brush up on my own skills, and asked my mom for a scan of my grandmother and -fathers wedding photo. Curious to see how well that goes.
Also, while you were coloring the eyes in this photo, what struck me as peculiar, although it obviously is just a result of reflection, but her pupils are definitely triangles, not circles 😂
Another easier way is to just take any photo, add a solid black colour layer and flatten it to get your black and white. that way you can play with the colours and you still have the original image for a reference,
Nice one got one question why don't you select the face and fill that one with the skin tone just wondering keep up the good work
Very well done tutorial, congratulations.
In your experience it is better to work on RGB or CMYK. What is the difference between the two?
See you soon and best regards.
Top notch tutorial. It may be too fast for folks who do not have the depth of knowledge that you do, but those of us who've been using Pshop a while will grasp not only the techniques but the concepts behind your workflow. I am surprised though, that you do not check your masks closer before proceeding to duplicate them willy-nilly. I often get tripped up when I duplicate a layer mask many times and well into a project only to find that I have to go back, fix the original mask and then duplicate it all over again. I check mine 3 different ways, depending on the underlying subject matter, the task at hand, and where I am at in the process: 1) just look at the JUST the mask by itself and fill in any voids, 2) turn the mask into a selection so I can see missing areas as I paint the mask, 3) turn my selection into a quick mask, paint while seeing the red overlay, exit quick mask when done and then using the selection to properly fill the mask. Most of my work has been in the advertising field dealing with product images so very precise masking was a must. For hard-edged, precise masks on very sharp photos I will often use the pen tool to create a path, turn the path into a selection, and then turn the selection into a mask. But at the end of the day, it is only the results that count and your methodology certainly gets the job done for your subject matter!!!
Wow. So much to grasp. I have a lot of this in Elements I think, but not all of it. I can't see the right side of your screen very well with all the adnustment layers. I really like this subject of colorizing photos and would like to learn a lot more about it. Where can I find more of YOUR tutorials? Thank you.
Hi! Sorry I didn't focus more on the adjustment layers with this tutorial. If you have any particular questions which I didn't cover, i'm always happy to do what i can in the comments! :) in terms of more tutorials i only have the 2 restoration/colourisation Photoshop tutorials and the Gimp colourisation tutorial out at this point in time. If you've not already done so i would really recommend checking out r/colorization on reddit as a learning resource. Not only do they link to some really good alternative tutorials but they are really good for constructive criticism while you;re learning. i picked up a lot on there myself.
TIP: Holding the alt/opt key while selecting the mask icon will make the mask black (one simple click). Alternatively, (if you forget to do this and need to make the mask black) instead of filling it with black using the alt/opt+delete technique, you can just hit cntrl/cmd+i to invert it. TIP 2: Use the Select Subject function to select the widest area to fill with the skin color, especially in the early stages.
Thank you u helped meeee :)
REDBUBBLE STORE: www.redbubble.com/people/JBColourisation/shop
Thanks for watching! If you have any questions, feel free to add them to these comments and I'll do what i can to answer them. Also, if there's a particular person or historical subject you'd like to see me colour, I'm always receptive to suggestions :).
Is it possible to do the same colorization to black and white videos?
@@sherifwahba4653 Definitely, using either Adobe After Effects if it's being coloured manually, which is something I am looking into for future videos. It can also be done automatically using A.I, which is producing some really interesting and still quite impressive results.
The channel 'Denis Shiryaevc' has been putting out some really cool videos lately, converting old Black and White footage to both colour and 4k. I find '[60 fps] A Trip Through Paris, France in late 1890s / Un voyage à travers Paris, 1890' particularly impressive if you've not seen it yet.
@@JBColourisation Thank you! but I checked that channel but I don't see it's natural colors like this, waiting for your tutorial about how to colorize B&W footage in After Effects and I'm pretty sure it will be great and informative tutorial, Sir! :)
@@JBColourisation Those videos are amazing! Spooky, actually. I feel so much presence watching them.
You know, the most common weak point in colorizing the B&W pictures is color of lips.
You all color the lips "normal red" and then that`s the reason why all lips tend to orange in your colorized pictures. While naturally the lips are not ordinary red, it is a kind of red that we call it magenta. So you guys must add magenta more than yellow, to reach out real color of lips.
I use NBP ColourmapX to create the gradients. It allows for up to 10 samples from an image. I get my images from GOGGLE images. It also stores all the gradients so as I can go back and find ones that might suit. Have a look at it anyway.
I'm getting a lot of great tips from this tut as regards to adding extra touches to faces etc
Thank you for sharing your method, it sounds really interesting! :)
Good result!
Thanks once again! :)
You are really good
have you ever tried using a gradient map from lightest to darkest skin tones? i use that to get a very good base skin tone! :)