In this tutorial we will color a black and white photo using gradient maps, solid colors, and the Color blending mode. Using these techniques, you will be able to hand color any black and white photo in a way that looks photorealistic.
Final Image Preview
Before we get started, let's take a look at the image we'll be creating. Before and after images are shown below. Click the screenshot to view a large color version. As always, the full Photoshop file is available via our PSDTUTS Plus membership.
Step 1
Double-click on the background image to make it an active layer. Create a new group by clicking on the little folder icon located at the bottom of the layers palette and put the layer in the group. Name the group "girl". Draw a path around all the hard edges of the girl. This includes the face and the shoulders. Don't worry about the hair for now; we will do that separately. Save the path. Make a selection of the path by holding Command-clicking on the path thumbnail in the paths palette. Hit Alt+Command+D and Feather the selection by 0.5px. Apply the selection as a mask on the "girl" group.
Step 2
Disable the mask on the "girl" group by holding Shift-clicking on the mask thumbnail. Now in the Channels palette, duplicate the red channel by dragging it to the New Channel button at the bottom of the palette. Apply a harsh curve, like the one below, to separate the hair from the background as much as you can.
Step 3
Hit Command+I to invert the red copy channel. Re-enable the mask on the "girl" group. Load the selection of the red copy channel with your background color set to white. Hit Delete(backspace) to fill the selection with white on the "girl" mask. If you hit Alt+Click on the mask thumbnail, you can see the mask as a channel. Clean up anything that looks as though it shouldn't be there, like that line between the hair and the face.
Step 4
Now let's start to add some color using a Gradient Map. In the "girl" group, make a new Gradient Map adjustment layer just above layer 0. Hit OK without doing anything and set the Gradient Map layer's blending mode to Color. Now double-click on the Gradient Map's layer thumbnail to open up the settings again.
A Gradient Map uses the grayscale data from the image below it to apply the gradient that you create. The left side of the gradient represents the darkest parts of the image. The right side represents the light parts. We need to make a gradient that represents what the woman's skin tone might look like from dark to light. I used the gradient below.
Step 5
Draw a path around the eyes. Load the selection of the path and Feather it 0.5px as we did before. Make a Curves adjustment layer just above the skin layer. Then lighten the eyes a little bit. Now make a Gradient Map layer just above the curves layer and hit OK before adjusting any settings. Set the new Gradient Map layer's blending mode to color. Now hit Alt+Command+G to apply it as a clipping mask to the curves layer. Now change the Gradient Map's settings to a pink-to-white fade like below.
Step 6
Draw a path around just the iris of the eye. Note that we need only the path to follow that one curve between the iris and the whites because the adjustment we are making will be applied as a clipping mask. Load the selection and Feather it 2px. Make a solid color adjustment layer just above the Gradient Map from the previous step. Then set it to a dark faded green. Hit Alt+Command+G to apply it to the same clipping mask you made earlier. Set the blending mode of the green layer to color. You might have to go back and adjust the green until you get a color that looks real.
Step 7
Repeat all the previous steps for the lips, except for this one we'll leave the blending mode of the Gradient Map to Normal, and set the layer's Opacity to 65%.
Step 8
We need to get more variance of color in the skin tones to make it look more real. I made some selections around the eyes, nose, and cheeks. Then I feathered them 20–40px, created solid color adjustment layers, set the blending modes to Color, and brought the Opacity way down to 10-20%. Below you can see my selections as quick masks. The layer palette shows the colors I used for the different areas. As you can see I used some red to add some blush to the cheeks, some red around the nose, mouth and eyes, and some blue to go on the bags of her eyes. These small details make all the difference.
Step 9
Make a loose selection around the face and neck and feather it 50px. Make a curves adjustment layer just above the 'skin' Gradient Map that we made earlier. I just went in and tweaked the colors a bit to get a little more color variation in the skin tone. You can download the curve file I used here.
Step 10
Now we need to make a selection of the hair. I used the path that I saved from Step 1. Then I modified it a little to line up with the hairline's shape and softness. I did this by using Quick Mask Mode(Q), and using brushes of various sizes and softness to match the hairline.
Make a new Gradient Map adjustment layer at the top of the "girl" group. Make the gradient a similar to the image below. I left the blending mode at Normal for this layer.
Step 11
Make a selection of the shirt. Then make a new Gradient Map adjustment layer. Hit OK and set the blending mode to Color, as we have done before. Edit the gradient so that it looks something like the one below. You will have to play around with the gradient until you get a good separation between the green and white stripes.
Step 12
Choose a Sky image. I used one I shot myself, but there are plenty of stock images you could use. Bring it into the document below the "girl" group. Hit Command+T, and size it to fill the frame. It looks good, but notice that our hair mask still isn't really looking that good against the blue background. The hair turns a muddy gray in the transition between hair and sky. To fix this, make a new blank layer just above Layer 0 (the image of the girl). With a large and soft black brush paint over those areas with an Opacity of 15-25% until the transition looks better.
As an added bonus, I applied the techniques from the Super Quick and Easy Facial Retouching tutorial to smooth out her face a little bit. As you can tell, I decided to make her red haired, but you can make your gradients whatever color you would like. She just seemed like a redhead to me. Here is the final image.
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User Comments
( ADD YOURS )Mike William May 1st
Awesome tutorial.
Learned some techniques. Good outcome.
( )sarah May 1st
wow…great tutorial. Thanks for sharing!
( )Razvan May 1st
Good stuff, thanks!
( )Doug Neiner May 1st
Great tutorial. Like the detail and the methods!
( )Andrei Constantin May 1st
perfect one
( )Craig Schlewitz May 1st
This is possibly one of the most amazing things I’ve seen on the site so far.
(:
Love it.
( )Nate May 1st
Really nice tutorial, thanks.
( )Tyler Bramer May 1st
Amazingly fast technique to color a black and white image!
( )LOSWL May 1st
Excellent, Excellent tutorial, the technique I learned in school was close but not as easy, this is way easier and looks like a better outcome, thanks!! :o)
( )Constantin Potorac May 1st
I have a tutorial like this written. But not like this. This one is better.
( )Jad Graphics May 1st
Great post! I always wondered how to this… Now I can finally apply this technique.
( )Jared May 1st
This is a fantastic tutorial. One of the most well written and technique-full that I’ve seen. Keep up the great work Kyle!
( )scmtngirl May 1st
That’s pretty amazing. Great tutorial.
( )ZaFaR May 1st
AWESOME AWESOME, GREAT, TREMANDOUS ,EXCELLENT,FANTASTIC.ONE OF MY MOST LIKE TUTORIAL HAS COMES IN, VERY VERY THANKS FOR SHARING, AMAZING SITE, AMAZING PEOPLE, AMAZING WORK, WONDERFUL TALENTED MIND, KEEP IT UP TO KYLE PERO, AND ALL……….
( )Lamin Barrow May 1st
WOW.. thats amazing stuff. I have never thought it was possible to make a colored version out of a black and white photo but now i know. My sincere thanks to you Kyle.
( )Ben Griffiths May 1st
Amazing result and fantastic tutorial, many many thanks!
( )Christian Mejia May 1st
This one will surely make my grandmother happy once I bring back life to her old photos!
( )glsmaster May 1st
Awesome… this is huuuuge!!! (:
Thanks for this! ^_^
( )goldenthunder May 1st
so cool!!!! i love it! thanks!!!!
( )giackop May 1st
very cool indeed!!
( )Snorri3D May 1st
just a fantastic and well written tutorial and a great technique.
THX
( )Jonathan Solichin May 1st
Wow, I didn’t even know it was a colored B&W pic at first. Great job!
( )Mason May 1st
Nice job man. There’s lots of potential with Curves and Fill Layers.
( )Fachia May 1st
Her face becomes so silk and soft. Great tutorial ..
( )Danny May 1st
Simply a great tutorial, thanks a lot man!
( )Colin May 1st
excited! can’t wait to try it!
( )Gleb May 1st
Excellent.
( )Great Tutorial. Thanx a lot.
Aminur Rahman [aka Tom R] May 1st
now this is enhance example
( )vidya May 1st
please elaborate ths apply the selection as a mask on the girls layer?
( )vidya May 1st
i understand ,now no prob….. m trying…
( )D. Carreira May 1st
THANKS!!! Another great tutorial!
David Carreira
( )Shane May 1st
To be honest, this isn’t something I can see myself needing to do in the near future (I’ve said *that* before though!).
I’m amazed at the quality of the final colour image - is there anything photoshop can’t do?
( )xavier May 1st
IN-CRE-DI-BLE!!
( )Daniel May 1st
Wow
Daniel
( )Jesús May 1st
Great tutorial.
( )Thanks!!
César "cche" May 1st
Nice tutorial, my first try:
http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/8681/bellbv5.jpg
keep the good tutorials coming
( )Dain May 1st
wow, it is very good. really nice i think
( )Ariful Khan May 1st
Simply Great. Thanks
( )kailoon May 1st
this is amazing … wow..
( )JPH May 1st
Awesome.
( )Soelberg May 1st
Such an awesome tutorial.. It have really made me figure out how to do this in a even prettier way than i used to.. Thanks for this lovly tutorial
( )Kortnee May 1st
Sigh! I wish I had checked the site before I did my Digital Imaging final, one of the components was to color a black and white image, mine sucked, comparatively!
( )Constantin Potorac May 1st
You rock
( )Stanley May 1st
There are several ways to do this and this is a good one
( )thanks
Nitin May 1st
Wow! That’s a totally new way of colorizing a photo that I have learnt today. Thanks a ton for sharing!
( )Cheers.
Terry May 2nd
i would imagine, shane, that some of this could be used for color replacement schemes in ad building too?
just a thought.
( )Josh May 2nd
I’m looking for a site with more of this type of info. anyone know of any!
( )pixlpusher May 2nd
Absolutely great tutorial!
( )SeraphimCollective May 2nd
Great tut. I was already familiar with a lot of this, but I saw a few other techniques in there as well.
( )Josh May 2nd
WOW! When I first saw the before/after picture, I assumed you just found the color version, then made it b&w… Very well written tutorial with a great result.
( )Lakeshia Bunrside May 2nd
Thats a cool technique of coloring in photoshop. I can really put this to use at work.
( )Grafiko May 2nd
Very nice, the selection of the hair is very good, thx fot this tut.
( )Daniel May 2nd
great job! very nice technique !
( )Josef May 2nd
awesome! can’t wait to trying this out when i get home…
( )Iris May 2nd
WOW!!!!
( )incredible, really! thanks very much for sharing.
olivier lalin May 2nd
Discoverig the site and it ROCKS!
( )Fynn May 2nd
Wow, this looks really cool! Can’t wait to start on it this weekend.
( )Martin May 2nd
Can’t wait to do this! Awesome
( )Pitrus May 2nd
If i want the girl’s photo without background to follow much easier the tutorial, do i need to join “psd tuts plus”??
Bye Dude..
jazznoise AKA Pitrus
( )Joefrey Mahusay May 2nd
Wow great tutorial. I like the finish product.
( )Bob May 2nd
Final product looks great but who wrote the tutorial? Jee whiz! Mighty confusing at times.
( )Qbrushes May 2nd
thanks
( )therapix May 2nd
Good work!
( )Ali May 2nd
really cool
( )jesse May 2nd
very helpful stuff
jesse wright photography
( )Nunis May 4th
That is one of the coolest Photoshop tutorials I have ever seen.
( )Jenny May 5th
that’s pretty nifty.
( )Kanna May 6th
wow,looking for this for sometime
( )thanx for the tutorial,i am learning a lot from the site
thanx again keep up
digital slr camera photographer May 7th
Great job. These tutorials on your site really help a newbie in digital slr camera photography like me, to enhance my photography works. Thanks a lot.
( )Sophie May 7th
This tutorial is nowhere near specific enough for beginners..
( )Jdonner May 7th
Nice, but realistic skin color? No.
( )Oakeem May 8th
I’m not to evaluate this excellent tutorial, so impressive indeed. I’m trying to find my way through this and I’d really appreciate it if you could just give me some detailed steps about paths; saving and applying’em. Thanks a million in advance.
( )designtrends May 9th
Cool good stuff, thanks!
( )Andrew D May 9th
Great tutorial, one of my favs on the site thus far!
( )Mido May 10th
Wow .. It’s wonderful .. Thanks dear
( )Cizan May 11th
WoW!
Very Fantastic
Really Fantastic
( )rosevirus1990 May 15th
very good you idea, You are good tincique
( )Dynsy May 21st
I dont get it can you make the tutorial more simpler please?? like saying exactly what buttons to pree..
( )I am really very new to photosoph and will appreaciate the help
Rodrigo (Brazil) May 23rd
Sensacional! Explêndido! MagnÃfico!
( )Nicholas May 23rd
I can’t belive it…you explaiined it so simply that even a newbie like me was able to understand…
( )I have just joined and yours is the first tutorial I have seen. I don’t know about the rest of material, but this was really amazing….
Much appreciated.
Nick
pHeR-d May 29th
Really amazing!!
( )menteil June 23rd
Wow .. It’s wonderful ..
( )great tutorial!!
thanks..
ashley June 23rd
yeah im not really understanding all of this photoshop jargon. i need the lesson to be a little more simpler. i’m definitely lost at just step 3! my hair won’t show up…
( )please help!
Max June 26th
thank you!!
( )Vlad July 4th
Best tutorial about photo editing/enhancing i’ve seen this year , and it still is nr 1 .. awesome work and very good detailed tutorial . hat’s off m8
( )Robin July 5th
I’m not a beginner, but I had a hard time following this tutorial. It could definitely use a lot more specifics.
( )Santa Clause July 10th
Hey Einstein, next time try to make it a bit more understanding. Very inacurate tutorial though, what if the picture is not this exact photo, then what? Different lighting conditions, different colors???
( )starlight July 10th
same tut??
http://www.okapixel.com/
( )Mansoor July 24th
Thanks for Posting.
( )Great Tut.
zvonko August 16th
THE BEST TUT ABT PHOTO MANIP I HAVE COME ACROSS…I AM INSPIRED FOR A WEEK NOW
( )zaloo00 August 29th
hi Kyle ! Great Tut
i have a question.
( )how do i select “red copy” channel in curves channel
dave October 5th
I dont think i will be able to that. it’s just too much
( )lateef October 18th
great i luv it do u av video version of it that one can watch over and over again
( )May Tove October 20th
Great, thank you.
( )brent November 28th
Been looking through tutorials all day and these are perfect.
( )Gautam Mistry December 9th
Great Tutoirals, thank you.
( )thando December 18th
hi i need some help wit this tut…
( )im kinda stuck on step 3…
im not sure what im supposed to be doing with the inverted mask thing
so id really appreciate it if u could further explain what i need to do cuz this is an awesome tut…
thanks in advance!
thomas December 22nd
very, very cool, thanks!
( )emmjay December 26th
truly brilliant
much appreciated
( )Claudio January 22nd
Its good, I guess, but I got lost on step 3, key bindings are different, for example hitting “Alt+Command+D (step 1)” on my mac, does nothing on photoshop, but It hides my icons on my mac.
Not really for beginners I think, but the concept is great.
( )الفلاش والسويش | فوتوشوب | صور ابداعيه | منتديات | المنتدى | منتدى | حـواء والموضه |سكرابز | Scrapbooking | صور شباب | صور بنات | صور سيارات | سكرابز ر January 23rd
good
( )discouraged by photoshop tutorials January 24th
Don’t understand it, i hate it when i try to do those things with my pictures, it never works! first step, doesn’t work! i double-click, the group folder is opened, nothing happens, am i stupid? probably, ’cause everybody else seemed to get it! anyways…
( )KC Varghese February 5th
Excellent method of teaching.
( )rakesh May 21st
thanks….
( )amazing creativity…
carry on….