Linda Sutton Posted August 9, 2019 Share Posted August 9, 2019 Hello Damien, This is my first ever attempt to colourize a B&W photo and I'm not sure if my approach to doing it is correct and would appreciate your assessment of my progress so far. This image that was likely scanned from a B&W photograph taken circa 1971. I'm working on a project to edit some of these old photos from my career in IT and have an album made to distribute to colleagues. I doubt whether I could get a higher resolution copy of this as the photographer is unknown; the person in the photo is a personal friend. For each colour, I created a levels layer of the selection, then clipped a solid colour layer to it (screenshot attached). It still looks a bit fake to me (especially the sweater), but I realize there are not many pixels to work with. Is there anything you would recommend adding/removing to improve it? Appreciate your comments! Thank you! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damien Symonds Posted August 9, 2019 Share Posted August 9, 2019 What I've found is that you need to vary the blend mode of the Solid Color layers for various purposes. Sometimes "Color", sometimes "Multiply", sometimes "Soft Light" etc. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linda Sutton Posted August 10, 2019 Author Share Posted August 10, 2019 Yes, I did use blend modes. So the technique of solid colour layers is correct then. I'll have another go with the sweater and skin. Thanks very much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damien Symonds Posted August 10, 2019 Share Posted August 10, 2019 In cases where you can't find any blend modes that you like, you'll need to use Advanced Levels. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damien Symonds Posted September 12, 2019 Share Posted September 12, 2019 How did this turn out, @Linda Sutton? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linda Sutton Posted September 17, 2019 Author Share Posted September 17, 2019 I left it basically as posted. I did use blend modes and advanced levels on it sections of it but I still need to clean up the edges of the sweater. I have a few very old scanned photos that I colorized that came out not too bad, and a few colored ones that look quite good considering the small file size. Thanks for your advice! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damien Symonds Posted March 16, 2020 Share Posted March 16, 2020 Please post something new in class, @Linda Sutton! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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