Colorization

Film colorization, film colourisation, film colourization or film colorisation is any process that involves adding color to black and white, sepia or monochrome moving-picture images. The earliest examples date back to the early 20th century, but it has become more practical and more common since the development of digital image processing.

It has been done with different effects for various reasons, including as a special effect or as a form of restoration for color films. The process has also garnered controversy because of its use to reissue black and white films and television shows in color. Some have claimed that this use of the process is a form of "cultural vandalism".


The basic of this tutorial is to show how the Curves option works in Photoshop and to explain how to colorize those old black and white photos.

First find a god black and white photo with big resolution, the bigger the better. Open it in Photoshop. Now go Image>Mode>CMYK.

Now I am going to explain how I did this on my picture source, but fill free to use your own. First of all get your selecting tool, I used Polygonal Lasso Tool, you can use your own, and select just the skin. Dont try to be to precise, because will fix that in just a moment.





OK, after you select the skin push tha button that says Edit in Quick Mask Mode, everything will turn red except the selected skin. Now go Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and select a value that fits you, (the object here is to soften the edges of the mask)




Now Exit Quick Mask Mode. Don't deselect, hold Alt key and pres the Add New Adjusment Layer button on the Layer Palette. From the box that pop's up select Curves. Chose your colors and when you are done press OK.

Here are my values, but you can use your own:
Here's how it should look like:


The rest is the same, select hair, gaussian blur, new adjusment layer, enter values, press ok, and thats it.

Here is my final result: