Color in a Monochromatic World

Transcription

1 Color in a Monochromatic World We take a black and white photo and turn it into a color one. Let s get started!

2 CAPONATA STUDIOS Color in a Monochromatic World We take a black and white photo and turn it into a color one. I ve scoured for ages looking for a way to take an old photograph, say of your grandparents, and fix it up with some color. All I ve found are ways to slop some color onto black and white photos without any regard for realism. The result is an image which looks like it was colorized. What I m going to show you through this tutorial are some techniques I use for colorizing black and white images. Please note that this isn t a film colorization tutorial as film colorization is a wholly different monkey. It also assumes you have some general knowledge of Photoshop CS 3-5. Before After

3 Step 1 Find and prep your black and white image. First off find yourself a nice black and white image you d like to colorize. For this tutorial we ll be using an image of a Motorcycle Racer. Use BW.jpg from the files provided. If your image is noisy use Imagenomics Noiseware to clean it up. It helps make colorization much easier. In this case I ve already applied the filter to the image. I remove the noise mainly because if you look at the noise in pictures you ll note it crosses color boundaries. It has its own texture to it and when you colorize a grainy picture you re colorizing the grain, which can hurt the process of realism. We will be adding a color grain back onto the image once we ve completed the colorization process. This will help us sell the illusion that this image was a color one to begin with. If your image has scratches and dirt on it now is the time to use the Spot Healing Brush to fix and issues with the image. We won t be getting into image touch up as that is a tutorial in it s own right.

4 Step 2 Research the subject and similar items for color information. Now we work on gathering some information about the image we ve chosen. In this tutorial our image consists of a motorcycle racer riding a Velocette motorcycle. Open up Google and do an image search for Velocette and you ll get a whole host of results. What we re looking for in particular are the colors of the bike, the logo, and any engine parts. Also we ll need to see how the bike reflects the environment around it. The other reference we need to look at is leather jackets and clothing. The important thing to remember is that while we may be able to lay down color and use the black and white image as our value range, sometimes value isn t enough. So we need to find some good pictures of leather and how the light works with its surface. Create a new group in your layer palette and name it Reference. Cut and paste your references in here so we can turn them on and off when needed. Create a second group and call it Colors. We ll be placing our colour layers in here.

5 Step 3 Painting the suit. Let s create a new layer, name it Suit and set it to Soft Light. Initially we re going to paint the suit red and then use an adjustment layer to shift the color later. In your color picker put # in the HEX field and press ok. This will be the base color for our suit. With your Brush Tool start painting over the black areas of the suit. Now I want you to notice something. If you look at the area on the of the bike by his knee you ll see that he s being reflected. Paint red over that spot too.

6 Step 3 Painting the suit. Next with your Brush Tool still active change your color to #ad8c95. This will be the highlight color for the leather. There s no need to fret about whether or not it s perfect. This is where having a tablet helps immensely. It takes some patience but if you work between bluring, smudging and painting some neat results can arise. If you mess up an area just repaint and try again, that s the beauty of it all. If an area looks too dull paint another line, blur and smudge. Paint some thin lines over the various highlights in the folds of his suit. Activate your Blur Tool and blur the lines until they re fuzzy. Smudge your lines along the contours of the leather highlights.

7 Step 4 Changing the color of the suit. Once you ve finished your paint and smudge you re going to notice it looks kind of dull. To remedy this duplicate the layer and set its Opacity to 70%. Now the colors are looking much bolder but let s not stop there. Open your adjustments panel and Alt-Click on Hue/Saturation. Select on the window which pops up. The layer should look like this. Repeat for the top suit layer. The settings for the bottom Hue Layer are: Hue: -141 Saturation: -64 Lightness: -78 The top Hue Layer: Hue: -141 Saturation: -38 Lightness: +52 Now our guy is wearing a nice Dark Blue leather suit. You can play with the values to find a color you like best.

8 Step 5 Gloves, Boots and the rest of the Rider. Create a new layer, name it Boots and Gloves and set it to Soft Light. We re going to do the same thing we did with the leather suit. The under color is #292d30 and the highlight color is #9198a2. Paint your base and then draw and smudge the brighter colors. This is just a repeated process similar to the suit. Again, take your time. The result is something which looks close to real black leather. Create another layer, name it Helmet and Arms and set it to Soft Light. This is where you ll be putting the colors for the helmet, goggles, arms, and shirt collar. The color we re going to use is #9198a2. Paint his arms, helmet and goggle lenses. Goggle rims are #f4f4ed. Paint his collar and goggle straps/helmet pads with the Dark Leather #292d30. Pretty straight forward. Lastly create a layer named Face and set it to Soft Light. Paint in a nice skin tone #73433a.

9 Part 6 The Bike. Create a layer called Bike Engine Parts and set it to Overlay. If you ve found some pictures of a Velocette bike you ll notice there are brass fittings and that the drive chain is also made of brass. So for the engine and wheel hubs we ll be using a gray #686e6c and the brass bits we ll use # Create another layer, name it Bike Black and set it to Soft Light. Now we ll be painting the body and pipes of the bike black, but not a real black just a really dark grayish-blue #1b1c1e. As well paint the rear number plate Blue #

10 Part 7 Velocette Logo and Sky Reflections. Create a new layer, name it Velocette Logos and set it to Color. Paint the lettering and stripe with a Gold color #7f6d08. For the flag find a reference for the British flag and select a red and blue which seems appropriate. Create a layer called Sky Blue and set it to Soft Light. The sky color is #9fb7df. This is where we start to add a little more realism into the bike. Wherever you see highlights on the bike color over it with blue. This is for the black and chrome. If a section seems too bright use the eraser tool with a large fuzzy brush set to a low opacity and do selective removal until it looks satisfactory. As well in this layer since it s the reflection layer we need to add a little color to the wheel rims where the landscaping is reflected. We ll use a green which will also be used in the grass layer #50612a.

11 Part 8 The Bike Tires Create another layer, name it Tires and set it to Soft Light. For the tire under color we ll be using the same color we used for the bike body #1b1c1e and the gray #686e6c we used to the engine for the highlights. Like we did with the leather earlier on paint the under coat and then draw the highlights in and smudge/blur them.

12 Part 9 Here comes the grass! Let s create another layer, name it Grass and set it to Color. Paint the layer #50612a. Once you re done painting click the lock transparency button in the Layers Panel. Set your second color to # Go to Filter>Render>Clouds. This will randomize the layer and fake grass without doing too much painting. It helps to have a reference of what the grass on a race track looks like so you can tweak colors a little better.

13 Part 10 Get ready to kick some Asphalt! Create a layer, name it Asphalt and set it to Soft Light. Using #7d7874 paint in the asphalt around our rider being careful not to overlap onto the bike as much as is possible. Now for our final layer. Name it Ground Shadows and set it to Soft Light. Where you see a shadow under the bike paint it with blue # If you look at shadows outside you ll see that they aren t black, in fact they ve got a bluish tint to them. This is what we re replicating with this layer. Set this layers Opacity to 21% to fade them into the ground a little better.

14 Finishing Touches The end is near! Alrighty, we re almost at the end. Remember at the beginning we created the Color group? I hope you kept your color layers inside the group because it s important for the next part. Keep in mind this step is optional if you do not have the plugin. Duplicate your black and white layer and the group with the color layers in it. Select both of the duplicates in the layer panel and press CTRL-E to merge them into one layer. Move this layer to the top of the stack. see a couple drop down menus. Set the first one to Color Films. What this does is it changes the list of Presets. In the Preset dropdown are a series of film simulation presets. For this tutorial use the Fujichrome Astia 100F preset. What the RealGrain plugin is doing for us is adding film grain back into the image and tweaking the image colors slightly to approximate what the picture would look like if it were shot on color film. Next open up the RealGrain plugin from Imagenomic. In the top left corner you ll

15 Finishing Touches This is quite possibly the end... You may be wondering why we added grain back into the image when we went to the effort of removing it. If your black and white image has a large amount of grain then colorization also colors the grain in the image. When we add the grain back in we re adding color grain over top to help sell the colorization as a legitimate photo. This doesn t work for every image and you can t always eliminate all the grain in an image. So there you have it, a black and white image which now looks like it was originally color. Thank you for taking the time to go through this tutorial and I hope you ll keep an eye out for any future tutorials Caponata Studios may offer. Feel free to drop me an at nick@caponatastudios.com Also take a look through the provided PSD file if you re unsure of how something is laid out. Cheers, Nick Martens