From Black & White to Color (revived for Photoshop CS4)

This video updates an old article I published back in 2001 in print. You can find a PDF of that article in the shanzcan tutorials section of one of my older web sites.
http://www.shanzcan.com

Photography by Mama Shan ©2000
Model: Nora Canfield

Visit Mama at
http://www.photoshopmama.net

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Photoshop
• tutorial
• photoshopmama
• colorize
• black
• and
• white

[tessalia87]

Great video demo. I'm using CS4 but the hue/saturation is grayed out when I open a black & white photo. How do I activate the hue/saturation feature?

[photoshopmama]

@tessalia87 Your image must be in Grayscale Mode, so you need to convert it to RGB. With your black & white photo open, go under the top menu - Image-Mode and select RGB. Now your Hue Saturation should be available.

[jazg41]

Mama this is the best tutorial on this subject i have seen, and I have seen quite a few. Keep up the great work,why dont you write a book on your techniques.you are better than Kelby in my opinion.

jazg41

[photoshopmama]

@jazg41 Oh thanks! My son-in-law has bugged me for over 5 years to write a book but I feel that Video Tutorials are a more complete demonstration and a more efficient vehicle for teaching the masses. I can show a lot more in a video in a shorter amount of time than if I had to write about it and do screen captures for every step. As voice recognition technology improves, I hope to have running text captions below the videos so that deaf people could also learn from them.

[lannie12]

i dont get how you got those colours in the layer... i'm a beginner :( how would i go about doing that?

[photoshopmama]

At the bottom of the Layers palette is a black/white circle, click that to add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer. Dial in each color there adding one at a time by clicking the "Colorize" option in the HueSat dialog box. Then Ctrl I to invert the mask of the Adjustment Layers. It's in the tutorial plus you can go to my shanzcan dot com site and download the PDF with written instructions.

[punkobassist]

You have a beautiful daughter!

[shootnaked]

mama you are just amazing. I bet you have forgot more then we will ever learn. keep up the wonderful work

[AleezaChocolat]

Thanks for the tutorial! This way of coloring B&W photos is really fun and easy . . . I've been practicing it all night long, lol.

[RratsArtStudio]

These are great learning techniques. Thank you

[ViktorBluhme]

Thank you! I just colored a photo from 1949 :D

[2233Brenda]

I honestly think the way this woman explains things is absolutely awful. She's getting off on her own voice and not at all showing in precise good detail what's going on.

[Neo2xr]

thx a lot I've been trying to learn how to do that for a long time but haven't been able to find a good tutorial until now.

[KUPPSKAGNEY]

Thankyou so much. I've been doing colouring for a while now, but after watching your tutorial my results are amazing.