Colorize Tutorial

Ok, since your here, I assume you want to try your hand at colorizing a black and white photo. It's easy to do in Paint Shop Pro So lets get started...

What your going to need!
Paint Shop Pro

A black and white photo

What your going to need!
Paint Shop Pro
A black and white photo

You can download one of the examples I used, or use one of your own.

Bonus Tip:

If you don't have a black and white photo, then make one out of a color photo. Heres how you can do that.

First, open the color image in Paint Shop Pro.

Go to Window/Duplicate to make a copy of it.

Close your original image, you won't need it anymore.

From the menu bar, select Colors/Gray Scale.

Presto, instant black and white photo.

Now go to Colors/Increase Color Depth and select 16 million colors.

Bam! Your done, and now have a black and white photo to start this tutorial with.....

We now return you to the tutorial.....

Start Paint Shop Pro and open your image.

From the menu bar, select Window/Duplicate. This will create a duplicate of your image, so the original is not damaged. You can close your original now, since we won't be needing it anymore.

The first thing we want to do is make sure our black and white image is set to 16 million colors. So from the menu bar select Colors/Increase and make sure that 16 millions colors is grayed out. If it is, your good to go. If it appears as bold, then click on 16 million and it will convert your image. This is important, since nothing else that follows will work if the image it not set to 16 million colors.

Now we want to create individual layers for each element of the image. We want to use a separate layer for the skin, hair, eyes, lips, eyebrows, and backdrop. So from the tool bar select the Layer tool. It looks like red and blue sheets of paper.

The Layer Pallet should open. It looks like this:

If you place your mouse over the background layer, you will see your image appear. That means the image is being used as the back ground Thats alright. Now we want to add a layer, so click on the 3 sheets of paper on the tool bar of the palette next to the trash can. A window will open that looks like this:

In the box where it says layer1 we want to give it a more meaningful name, so rename our layer "Hair". Under the layer name, is a box that says Blend Mode. Click the little arrow and select "Color" Now click Ok. Your layer palette should look like this:

The layer for the hair should read:

Hair.....100......Color

That takes care of the hair layer. Now do the same thing and add a new layer for the eyes, skin, lips, eyebrows, and backdrop. Your layer pallet should look like this:

Ok, now that we've prepped our image, we are ready to start. Now comes the fun stuf......

Click on the layer for the hair. Close the layer palette. you can close it by clicking the little X in the top of the box, or do what I do and hit the Tab key. To open the tools again, just hit the Tab key again. Now we are going to color the hair.

I find it easier to zoom into the image, so I click the magnifying glass tool twice to zoom in on the hair area. You can use the scroll buttons to move around the image.

We want to change the foregound color to the color we want to use for the hair. Look on the side of the screen for this tool:

In this example, the red colored box is the foregound color, the white is the background color. Click on the red box and the color selection box will open. It looks like this:

There are a lot of settings for colors, we want the one at the bottom that reads HTML Code. In this box, enter the color we want to use for the hair, in this case:

EFDECD Now select the paint brush tool. Use these settings to begin with:

Now, just start to paint around your image. Use a small paint brush tip around the edges. As you move towards the inside area of the hair, you can increase your paint brush tip to help cover more ground. It should be looking something like this:

Now just keep doing it until your done. Your image should look like this:

Now we move on to the skin. First open your layer palette and select the skin layer. This is important. Once you have the skin layer selected, we want to change the foregound color to a skin color. Cick on the foregound color, and in the HMTL code box change the color to this:

F9BA97

Now zoom in on the face. Where you start is up to you, but I usually work around the eyes, eyebrows and lips first. You want to set your paint brush tip real small I was set at 2. You also want to zoom in tight to get a good close fill. In this example, I was zoomed in at about 4:1, a tight zoom, with a 2 tip brush.

Trace all around the outside, and when your done, it should look something like this:

Yuk, not too good, but don't worry, we'll fix that when we're done. Now keep going and finish the face. The finished product should look something like this:

Still not real good huh? Looks like someone got a little carried away with skin dye...... So we have to tone it done just a tad.

Open your layer palette. Across from the "skin" layer is a bar that reads 100. That is the slider bar that controls the "opacity" of the layer, or how transparent that layer will appear. You should see the little slider control at the right side of the 100 box. Click it with the mouse and slide it slowly to the left. Watch your image. Notice how the tone seems to fade out. I set mine at about 54. This is the result I got:

Much better I would say.....Ok, so lets keep going.... Next up will be the lips. So, open the layer palette, select the lips layer and zoom in on the lips. Again use a tigt zoom, about 6:1 with a brush tip of no more then 2. Click your foregound color box, and in the HTML code box, enter the color for our lips:

BA837E

When your done with the lips, slide the opacity bar to about 85.

Next we work on the eyes...... I decided on a hazle but you can use any color. From the layer palette select "eyes" and set the foreground color to whatever. I selected:

00C00

I zoomed in at 6:1 brush tip a 2 and did the eyes. Backed off a little they looked like this:

Looks a little like something out of a Stephen King novel, so slide the opacity way down. I moved mine down to about 25. I wanted just a hint of color in the eyes. Finished product:

Moving right along, up comes the eye brows.... Select the eyebrows layer, set the color for the same as the hair:

EFDECD

and do the eye brows. As usual a tight zoom and small brush tip will give you the best results. Why not do the hair and eyebrows under the hair layer you ask?

Good question.... In some cases, you may want to control how dark the eyebrows appear verse the hair. If you did them both on the same layer, they will both be effected by the opactiy setting. So I split them up.

And finally, to finsih up our project, we want to do something with the backdrop. So, select "backdrop" layer.... Not backGROUND but backDROP. Select foreground color, I went with:

C0000

and started with a middle zoom, 3 tip brush and traced around the image.

Keep at it until your done. It looks a little intense right now

So we go to the layer palette, and slide the opacity for the background down. Again, I wanted just a hint of color in the backdrop, so I set mine down to about 25.

Presto, your done....... Now here comes some important information so don't jump the gun on me ok!

We want to save our image. But we want to save it so we don't loose the individual layers..... If you were to just save it now as a jpeg or gif file, Paint Shop Pro would merge all your layers into a single image, and if you wanted to make changes to this image later on, your going to be in trouble. You would not have any of the layers.... So heres what we do.

First, from the menu bar select File/Save a Copy As

Give you newly created image a name, select the format you want to save it as, either jpeg or gif, and save it.

Then go to File/Save a Copy As once more.

Give it the same name as your first file. Heres the important step.

Under the Save as Type, click the down aroow key and select Paint Shop Pro Image with the file extension of *.psp.

This will save the image and save the individual layers as well for later use.

By giving your PSP file the same name as the finished image, you'll know which *.psp file goes to what image.....

As I said earlier, it was going to be easy, but not automatic... As you pratice, you'll get better and better at it, and before you know it, all your old black and white family pictures will be in color....

Have FUN!!!!!