How to instantly colorize black-and-white photos

How to instantly colorize black-and-white photos. In this post I will be talking about a really useful, quick and easy photo retouching skill.

Quite often I will get a photo restoration enquiry to repair a damaged old photo. These images are usually black and white, and I am asked if it is also possible to colorize it.

There is no easy fix to restoring damaged photos. Photo restoration work is one of the more time consuming digital photo editing jobs. Saying that I do find it very rewarding bring damaged old photos back to life.

I will skip the “how to restore old and damaged photos” as I have done numerous previous posts on restoring damaged photos, you can read one I posted recently here.

Instead I will focus on talking about how to instantly colorize black-and-white photos.

Colorizing a photograph by hand can be time-consuming. Sometimes you do to preserve specific colors, skin tones, etc.

Normally the client has no reference about what color the clothes were. So you have the freedom to select whichever color works for you.

Photoshop is a great photo editing tool and colorising is a quick and simple task. If you don’t have Adobe Photoshop, here is a link to buy or download a free trial copy.

Once you have photoshop installed and a black and white photo open, you can proceed:

• Check your image mode settings

The first thing you’ll want to do is make sure the image mode is set to RGB and not grayscale.

To check this setting in Photoshop, go to Image > Mode. You will get a dropdown which will either be “grayscale” or “RGB”. If it’s set to Grayscale then the filter will not work, so change the mode to RGB.

• Open the Colorize filter

In the menu, go to Filter > Neural Filters. Click the Colorize filter from the list. If you’re using it for the first time, you’ll need to download the filter from the cloud. Once  downloaded, set the toggle to “on” and you can see an instant preview of your colorized photo!

•  Adjust the color settings

After you’ve applied the color effect, you can further adjust the settings. you can then correct the color cast as well as exposure etc after applying the colorize effect. There are also other effects you can use in the Profile drop-down if you’re looking to experiment a bit.

• Customise the focal points

By default, the Colorize effect will automatically select the colors to use in the photo. You could customise the colors by using the focal points within the filter.

Using “Auto color image” setting and then adding your own customisations is one way. Or you can select everything yourself and create a more custom colorisation.

When you adjust the Focal points, hover over the preview image in the filter panel. click on the area you want to adjust. Using the “Size” slider to determine the size of the area that you want to adjust.

• Output your results

Once finished, you have to output the results to your edit. It is best not to use the “Current document” selection not to affect the original layer. try not to edit non destructively. Rather chose “Smart Filter”. This converts the layer to a Smart Object, and is a non destructive editable filter.