Photo Colourisation: GIMP Tutorial
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ก.ค. 2019
- I usually colourise photographs using Photoshop but I wanted to see if GIMP could produce similar results. Despite being a free piece of software I was really impressed with how good the results turned out to be and I wanted to share my method. Please let me know in the comments if this video was useful. :)
To see colourised pictures, you can follow me at the following:
/ jbcolourisation
/ jbcolourisation
/ jbcolourisation
It’s really cool to see that it’s not about the software you use, but rather the method you use to get there.
The temptation now is to try and do it in increasing bizarre pieces of software. "Photo Colourisation: Microsoft Excel Tutorial!"
tbh gimp is one of the best software for image editing. People on 4chan bragging about 'muh can't draw circles' should dilate as much as possible.
I've looked around at a few colourisation tutorials, but this has been the best I've seen. You clearly lay out your methodology and your reasons and it gives a great insight into the whole process.
Thank you so much for taking the time to do such a detailed tutorial!
Thank YOU very much for taking the time to leave such a nice comment :)
It's been like a year since this was uploaded but I really appreciate the tutorial. I've been using GIMP for colorization and have never really figured out how to emulate the quality of images I always see done, and this tutorial really helped me get amazing results. Thank you so much :)
Hi All.. a couple more tips..
1. Complex patterns, i.e. trees. Select the original layer with the image / tone information and click Select -> select by colour. Select the foliage. Then click the leaf colour layer and paint as per JB's tutorial. That should only paint the leaves of the trees and leave he sky showing through. Invert the original selection to paint the sky.
2. Grass/earth is normally multiple colours. Try painting as per JB's tutorial with different colours and pen opacities.
3. Swatches. If like me you commonly colourise similar subjects, such as the armed forces, you may find yourself repeatedly using the same colours. Therefore if you use the reference pictures method you could create a swatch of commonly used colours and simply load that image instead of multiple images all the time.
Amazing. The best tutorial on colourising I have seen so far. I cannot afford photoshop. Learning GIMP with such tutorials is really helpful.
I've been using this method for a while now and I LOVE it. A couple of tips - I may have missed in the tutorial, but if not here goes..
1. Image -> Mode -> Grey Scale, followed by Image -> Mode -> RGB gets rid of all colour in two clicks. [I know JB and I mentioned that in a previous comment].
2. Do each layer in full opacity first as it's easier to see what you're doing, and reduce to desired level after.
3. When tidying borders click the Eye icon to make other layers Invisible, except the one you are tidying and the adjacent layer. Also push it back up to 100% opacity. It's much easier to see what you're doing :)
Thank you very much for sharing those suggestions with everyone! I like that the comment section for my tutorial videos are helping to improve the learning experience for people. :)
Hats off to your effort of comparing an awesome opensource program to the pricey commercial counterpart. We're definitely moving in the right direction.
Thank you for sharing this!
Thank you very much for your comment. Free software is indeed incredibly impressive these days and I'm excited to see how it develops in the future. :)
I have watched numerous YT videos on colorization w/Gimp, and so far this is the one that has made the most sense to me. Others advocate a layer mode of either Overlay or Multiply, but HSL seems to offer the most control for this type of thing. Another point that sets this video apart, for me anyway, is the approach you take on thinking about the subject itself rather than focusing solely on the software and what it can do. Work on the level you've demonstrated here takes a firm knowledge of the software, to be sure. But keeping your subject in mind - what they may have been through, what their environment is, how these things would have affected him, etc, is crucial to achieving success.
Thank you very much indeed! I think my approach was guided by the fact that I've always found it quite hard to learn things unless I personally understand why I have to learn them? I watch/have watched quite a few tutorials and I will often find myself Googling follow up questions about how part of a software functions, so that I understand the importance of a given step. Thanks again for such a nice comment. :)
I would use LCh instead, it keeps the original perceived lightness
Impressive and quite realistic.
Thanks a lot! Aside from some software crashes, I found GIMP pretty good for colouring. :)
After I came across an old photograph of my Great Great Grandfather a few days ago, I found this the best tutorial available on the subject. Thank You for that!
It even taught me a lesson on how to process the scan properly because I ended up with burnt out surfaces on the face and parts of the hair that wouldn't colourate. At the same time the colours on the canvas came out very light.
Fun fact. The original photographer has outlined the irises with ink to give them proper prominence, which obviously looks terrible in high rez on screen. I re-enacted the shot with my SLR on a tripod and the remote in my hand and then applied my own eyes. There is still some adjusting to do but it works!
I'm glad it was of help! I had the exact same issue with a picture I coloured a while back in terms of eyes. It's on here as 'A German Gentleman (C1880)' and if you look at the before and after at the end, you can see the remains of the scraped off black material they used for the eyes originally! I've also experienced before, although not in video form, a ladies eyebrows which were finely penciled in on the print. I find that sort of mark from the original Photographer, such as fingerprints from touching the print too quickly, really fascinating as part of the history of the picture. :)
Excellent tutorial. The balance between the technical and artistic is just right, the discussion of the various tools and techniques is really helpful. I‘m impressed by the structure of the tutorial right down to the review of objectives at the end. Much appreciated, best wishes & keep safe. 🌈
This has to be one of the nicest comments I'd ever had, thank you so much!! :D
Very impressed
Thanks for putting in the time here - very useful and educational. I have some old photos of my grandfather between the wars I want bring to life
Thank you! I think the most rewarding part of making these tutorials is the thought that they're helping people bring the past to life as you say! :)
GIMP is a free software and almost equal to the paid software. GIMP is great and you use it so well 👍.
Thanks so much for this: the most useful colourisation video I've seen. The "tech stuff" is spendidly lucid, but what makes it pure gold is the painterly stuff about 'where the colours go, and why'. I realise: if I'm going to get good at this, I don't need to go to computer school; I need to go to ART school!
Amazing Tutorial! Thank you.
Excellent demonstration and done with so much clarity and detail. Many thanks for sharing your knowledge. Much appreciated and wish you a much larger following than what you have now.
Thank you very much indeed for your kind words! Obviously I've love to have a larger audience but I am very happy with the audience I've collected already, smallish as it currently is. You lot are always very encouraging and kind. :)
Your amazing, I watched you after doing some colourisations for fun and now I know what and how to improve, thanks!
Thank you so much, I'm always really happy to hear that I've been able to help someone. :)
if you do more gimp work i would be interested in learning, i have done very little work with old pictures this video did help me thank you
Thank YOU very much for watching it! I'll certainly consider doing more Gimp videos in the future! :)
@@JBColourisation thank you, i find that to many of the people who post videos dealing with gimp do not go into much depth
i agree often end up wanting to ask questions
Thank you for the wonderful tutorial. Although very new to colourisation, I've learnt much from the techniques you have offered.
Thank you so much I'm glad to hear it! If you have any followup questions or requests for potential future videos let me know :)
Thank you for this wonderful tutorial! looking forward to see more :)
Thank you very much! I have another tutorial which should be out fairly soon and several larger scale videos in the process of being planned which i'm really looking forward to sharing! :)
Superb video. Detailed, informative, and to the point. i will use this video as a tutorial for my first colorization attempt. Thank you.
Thank you very much, I'm glad it was of help! :)
Thank you very much. This tutorial is very helpful.
You're very welcome, I'm glad it was useful! :)
Thanks for the vid!! Very easy to watch
Thank you :)
Brilliant tutorial!
Thank you very much! :)
Great tutorial! Would. This process be similar when colouring tanks etc?
This is a different method than the one I have been using I will have to give it a go
If you spot any ways i could improve my method, please let me know! :)
@@JBColourisation The more you practice the more you learn. Just keep trying different methods some might suit you others don't. Stay strong stay safe
This was a great tutorial!!!!!!1
Thank you very much! :)
Thank you for this. I've just started to use GIMP, after years of using Photoshop. The newest PS version (2020) is so slow, and lags so badly, with my tablet, I find it unusable. This tutorial really gives my hope that I will be able to do all the things, restoration, colorization, etc., that I do with Photoshop, in GIMP. I've also downloaded Darktable, RAWTherapee, and Inkscape to complete the suite.
Yeah i was really, really impressed with what GIMP is capable of these days. I mainly made this video as I'd seen a lot of people who were just starting out with colourisation be told that they HAD to get paid software, usually Photoshop, or they wouldn't be able to get good results. From what I've seen of restoration in GIMP it also seems remarkably strong for that also, so yeah I really don't see you being held back at all! :)
Amazed from this free software, it's a learning curve, but look at that result. 👍👌
Thank you! Yes, free software has really moved forward a great deal in quality in recent years :)
Great work! thanks for share! and thanks for do it in a free sftware, it's nice t see some free software in youtube.
Thank you! I've been actually learning the free 3D software Blender recently and yes, it's really nice how high quality free software can be these days! :)
@@JBColourisation yeah blender is great. The only thing in my opinion is that it change too much you can learn a way of make something and in a few weeks later it change, I think that it would be better if they take more time beetween change of workflows.
Other great software is unreal.
This is really useful, thanks! I am having an issue though, when I attempt to "Paint" the skin colour in with the white brush tool (around 4.20 in this vid), if I go over the same area twice the colours gets more intense. That doesn't appear to be happening for you, if you go over the same part twice it appears to have no impact on the colour tone at all. Do you know what might be causing that? It's basically stopping me progressing at all and I can't work out what I am doing wrong!
Wild guess from me: the opacity of the brush is not at 100% and you need to do that.
Very complete and usefull tutorial. One question : why don't you use bucket fill tool (after having create a border with the brush) for sppeding up the process ?
Thank you! Ha ha it's funny, that never even occurred to me. I think the old days of being burnt by the paint bucket tool in Microsoft Paint, where you'd accidentally fill the entire screen, subconsciously made me forget it. Thanks for reminding me, it could certainly save time using this method. :)
@@JBColourisation I remember that too ! I wonder why when I used it I need to do it two times because the first time there is a difference of opacity between the border and the inside ?
@@oliviercharles Not certain of the exact reason, possibly weird edge aliasing? I must say I've thankfully not used Microsoft Paint for a bit so i can't be certain.
Amazing work and explained very well. u deserve more views
Thank you so much, I really appreciate you saying that! :)
@@JBColourisation all my photos edited with gimp. I need to learn more about colouring. My work is on Instagram. Under the same name
@@backfilms1953 Your work is great! Thanks for sharing :)
Hello, Thanks again for your tutorial wich is for me the reference. I saw people working on colorisation with PS and using differents colors for the skin. They manage to use the darker part of the b&w for a dark tone of skin, and do the same for the lighter and the middle tone. I try that with the gimp but I mess with the selection tool. I hope it can inspire you for another tutorial. (I also hope that I'm enough clear in my explanations)
I may well do a follow up GIMP tutorial in the future. Sadly the 'Blend If' tool in Photoshop which I also often use in the way you describe to colour different brightness values separately doesn't seem to have an obvious GIMP alternative? I'm always on the lookout for ways to improve my tutorials however so If i can think of a way to bring that functionality, or similar, to GIMP that would be pretty cool to share.
@@JBColourisation thank you for your answer, I hope you'lle fine the time for this tutorial and maybee the Gimp team Will work on this feature... 🤞
Nicee!
Thank You :)
I saw another tutorial which just added a transparent layer on top and painted with a brush on overlay mode. Is that one better or the method you prescribed?
Generally speaking, and with no criticism to the other video, I think that method would not be as easy to make changes to later. I know from my own working methods that I tend to spend a lot of time making changes to my layers right up until the final export. Generally speaking I believe my method, while slightly more time consuming, would be a better one to learn with as I think hard to undo mistakes tend to really put people off using software such as this. :)
How do you colour something that should be white or black and you want it more white or more black?
Nice video! I know it is a daft question but are there any major differences between colourising male and female faces?
Not really. It does tend to change my approach a bit depending on how much make-up i feel the person might be wearing, since ladies tend to cover more skin 'imperfections' than men do. Although that depends a lot on age, both of the subject and the photograph itself. Generally speaking, in the western Photographic era at least, obvious make-up didn't become socially acceptable until the 1920's. Before then you'd risk being labeled as a 'Painted Woman', with all the connotations that came with that. Before that point you'd really just see some face powder/foundation, ladies would even bite their lips and pinch their cheeks on occasions to produce a 'natural' appearance. Children generally didn't wear any make-up, even of a concealing variety and if you look at this picture I coloured, from around 1900, you can see that I tried to keep a more pallid look to her complexion and i tried to keep her lips and skin tones more naturalistic. i.redd.it/fl6rf7kh6o631.jpg
JBColourisation ok cool, thank you for responding! Iv'e seen your amazing work and reddit and It is very impressive 😀
My approach with female faces is I use less colours to make the face look "smoother." I use more colours for male faces to give it an impression of "depth".
There is one for sure: the 3 hour beard part. Lol
For those wanting to colorize along with his tutorial, I found the original photo of the Australian soldier in this album. www.flickr.com/photos/australian-war-memorial/albums/72157607335488831 you can download it.
i am looking for more information about colorizing beneath other layers. in your video, which by the way is very helpful in understanding colorizing, you mention moving one layer below another so as to just color the layer you want without overlapping. my question is: i have tried this but it is not working for me is there something i am missing? thank you
Thank you very much and sorry for the late response. When you say it's not working for you, what is happening when you do it? Something to always keep an eye on is the layer and brush blend modes. It's worth always double checking that the layers are set to the correct blend mode, if you're painting in between layers it seems some people are having trouble if they have layers lower in the stack which aren't set to 'HSL Color'. The brush settings on the left side can sometimes be incorrect also. i tend to leave mine on 'normal' and use any blend options on the layer itself.
@@JBColourisation I setup two different layers moving one below the other so as to just paint the intended layer, my result was both layers being painted
I'm not sure why, but when I color pick from a reference and do exactly what you did, I get wacky colors that look nothing like skin, hair, eyes or anything else.
What colorspace is your image in out of curious? You can check under Image-Mode. It should be RGB for most purposes. This sounds like possibly Gimp is converting your colours to a difference colour space? In the colour picker you can also specify RGB.
Apologies for butting in but I agree with JB.. if the palette of the image is different sometimes GIMP asks to convert to its own palette. Try both accepting GIMP's palette and keeping the original. One may work better. Also is the Mode on your image set to Multiply? JB is the expert as it's his tutorial but that comes to my mind.
i don't know what i did wrong, but when i tried to use the brush after masking the first layer, the brush didn't work and there wasn't any color
It might be worth checking the brush blending mode over on the left? The layers have blend modes but you can also paint in a blend mode with the brush. See if it's on 'Normal' under the 'Paintbrush' heading.
Hi...how do you add in your refence pictures to pick the colours, also can you paint with white colour?
Sorry should say * reference
Hi! To the first question there are three main ways I know of to import reference. You can either drag an image into the program and drop in into your project. You can create a new layer and paste a copied image from the web or you can go File - Open as layers and it will open an image file into that same document. As for the second comment, you can't paint in pure black and white using this method but when colouring you should never be working with pure black or white really. Nothing in like 99.9999999% of cases is either purely black or white and even something which looks black or white likely has a faint colour to it which your eyes will be able to pick up, even if it doesn't seem that way. I created this picture a while ago and all I did with the right hand side of the image is boost the Saturation massively to reveal the hidden colour within the tie. imgur.com/a/Vdwfdl1 The only reason the white is white and not some form of yellow in this image is likely that the background was artificially replaced with pure white in Photoshop. if you want to make something whiter or blacker in appearance the best best is to alter the contrast of the original image. :)
@@JBColourisation Hi thanks for the information, your tutorial has helped me no ends, i really struggled getting to grips with Gimp, but thanks to your good self, i'm moving on rapidly through gimp, i look forward to your next tutorial...many thanks
OMG
very good educational video ... hard to understand high speed narration though: too fast! (had to slow down the PB speed to 0.75 to make the voice sound "more human" ...) ;-) a question: is there a way to do all this with much less mouse clicks? some kind of an 'automated' process that would do the same thing much quicker for example? (how are old B&W movies colorized for example? i'm sure they are not worked upon on a frame by frame basis! or are they?) 🙂
btw, anyone thinking GIMP is not as powerful as Photoshop, better go and study about digital painting and graphic software from scratch! 😀(and GIMP is not the only free or paid program that rivals Photoshop ... they better learn about that fact, too ...)
Great tutorial! Could you please post links to your reference images or tell us where we may find them please?
Hi! i'm afraid I don't think I have the links for these exact images now as this video was put together quite quickly. Generally speaking most of my reference comes from just using Google Image Search and typing in things like 'Man Sunlight on Side of Face Portrait' until I find one that looks like a more modern colour equivalent of my black and white face. I would say that Pixabay has some really nicely taken images on it and these days I often find myself using it as a reference source. Sorry I can't be of more assistance.
@@JBColourisation Many thanks for replying :) May I suggest one minor tweak to the process? I also have an image which requires desaturating. All I did however was go to Image -> Mode -> Greyscale to remove all colour, and then Image -> Mode -> RGB to give me a pure monochrome starting point with an RGB image.
@@julianmhall Yeah, that sounds great! Thank you for the suggestion. :)
Are these instructions identical for PS?
They are surprisingly similar for the most part but Photoshop does differ in a few ways. HOWEVER! I also have a Photoshop version of this tutorial uploaded! (Along with a restoration one) :)
@@JBColourisation cool I'll check it out. Can I just ask you, when I try to color the roof of a house a very dark brown (which currently is in black and white), nothing happens when I try to paint. Any idea why?
@@johnp82 Are the other colours working ok? If not, it may be that the image mode under 'image-mode' is not set to RGB? Assuming the other colours DO work it could be a layer blend mode issue, if it's not in 'Color' mode or potentially a brush paint mode issue, as your paint brush also has a layer blend selected (which you can change to 'color; on the left) Assuming those are all set as they should be, what happens when you paint with a brighter brown? :)
@@JBColourisation when I try to paint a brighter brown or any bright color, it works . I'll check those parameters. Thanks.
excellent 100% agree you dont need paid software! i am totally open source now:O)
I remember first trying to use both GIMP and Blender back in around 2000 and i was...not impressed shall we say! They seem to get better by the day these days however and i think the opinions which were formed based on those early software builds seem to be being replaced with a lot of respect, thankfully. :)
@@JBColourisation things move on and the support for the programmers has changed allowing them to put more time in i think, absolutely love Blender 2.8x+ and GIMP, Darktable is awesome, inkscape etc..never going back to photoshop and lightroom.
Wouldn't LCh color be better? That way the final perceived lightness of the image is the same as the original.
To stop accidentally painting over other areas you can reorder the paint layers and also use layer grouping
FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO WANT TO USE PHOTOSHOP: go to photopea.com it's photoshop but in ur web browser ;)
What are you up to now? Are you doing professional level colorization commissions?
My commissions are currently closed sadly due to other life things. I have been working on a few things in the background which should hopefully surface on this channel fairly soon however! :)
@@JBColourisation Oh wow! I think your one of the best colorists i've seen. I've been following a few of them some are not professional and have decided on a different path yet others seem to be thriving in the business. I am following you on FaceBook. I love your technique I really appreciate the time and effort you put into this specific tutorial especially the key was the use of "blend-if" rather than "gradient map" for your colors. I'd like to discuss this with you in more detail via email if you are available. Or I can message you.
@@landowhite1159 If you'd like to drop me a message on the Facebook page i'll certainly see what I can do. Or feel free to leave more comments on the videos directly if you have specific project related questions. :)
Adobe has hated this tutorial.
27:10 Image size 1.6GB
Colourisation files can get quite large. Although it's possible to keep the file size down by lowering the resolution, or combing some of the layers if possible. :)
So in reality, there is not a colorization in Gimp. You got to paint the picture. That isn't really colorization, is it?