Have you have ever looked at pictures you have taken or even just looked at the world around you and wondered what it would look like if everything was a different colour. Maybe the sky would be green or the leaves on the trees a brilliant orange?
Do you have old black and white photo’s that you would love to see in colour?
Well you don’t have to wonder about it, just do it using Photoshop. This tutorial will show you how to alter colours or even add colour to black and white using hue / saturation adjustment layers.
Re-colour your world
For this I am going to use a nice and simple image from my library.
Add a Hue / Saturation adjustment layer above your image layer. Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue / Saturation. In the adjustment layer options window make sure the colorize option is ticked. This will add a colour cast to your image. Change the Hue to get the desired colour. Adjust the saturation and lightness if needed. Then hide the adjustment layer by clicking the eye symbol.
The next step is to use the mask on the adjustment layer to make it effect only the parts of the image you want to be that colour. The tree is a fairly complicated subject to mask due to its fine detail of leaves and the small gaps revealing the sky behind it.
If you have not used selection tools and masks before I suggest you read the tutorials on layers and their masks and selection tools and advanced masking before continuing.
To make this easier select your Magic wand tool. Set your tolerance to about 50. Click on a blue part of the sky and you should get a selection line going all around the tree. Go Select > Similar and you should find all the small parts of sky that are visible through the tree are now also selected as in the example image.
The sky should now all be selected. Make your adjustment layer visible again. Select the mask on your adjustment layer and fill the selection in black. This should leave a white shape of the tree and the grass on the mask making the tree and grass red on your image.
Duplicate the current Hue / Saturation adjustment layer. Then select the mask. If you don’t have the selection visible any more Ctrl click on the mask to bring it back. Then on the new adjustment layer fill it in white. Then invert the selection by going Select > Inverse. Then fill the selection in black. You should have a mask that is the exact opposite of the previous adjustment layer.
Using the new adjustment layer change the colour to something different. You will be left with a sky that is one colour and a tree and grass that are another.
Duplicate the first adjustment layer you made (right click > duplicate). Change the colours again to something different. Then carefully paint black on the mask to hide the leaves. This will leave you with the grass and tree trunk in the new colour.
Duplicate the new adjustment layer and change the colour again. Now use black on the mask to hide the tree trunk leaving you with just the grass in the new colour.
You have now separated all the elements of the page and they all have new colours. The best thing about adjustment layers is that you can go back and change them when ever you want. If you don’t like these colours you can just choose different ones till you find the combination you like best.
Here are 3 examples
You can basically choose what ever colours you want. Its a simple matter of getting the masks right and then worrying about the colours later.
Re-colour black and white images
This exact same technique can be used to add colour to black and white images as well.
Frist I open my black and white image.
For the first Hue / Saturation adjustment layer I chose a nice pink colour then, using the mask, painted in the petals.
On the next adjustment layer I used a green and painted in the stem and leaves.
The final part was to make the background darker. I did this with a third Hue / Saturation adjustment layer and adjusted the lightness slider to make it almost totally black to finish off the image.
Advanced colouring tips
You may find that using the hue, saturation and lightness doesn’t give you the colours you need. For more advanced colour options add a Contrast and Levels adjustment layer to each Hue / Saturation layer. Make sure they only effect the Hue / Saturation adjustment layer by linking them (holding down Alt and clicking between the layers to indent them).
Get as close as possible to the colour you want using the Hue / Saturation layer. Then tweak it to perfection using the contrast and levels layers.
Using this technique you can add colour to more complicated images such as portraits.
View the finished example image in large to see how the layers are stacked.
Original image is from iStock then converted to black and white to appear as bellow.
Then advanced colouring was used to re colour it.
This method could be used to restore old black and white images your family may have laying about. It can also be used to change single elements of an image, such as a persons hair or skin colour. Maybe you want to see what you would look like with a tan and blond hair? Well just open your photo in Photoshop and use the advanced colouring technique to find out.
