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Wouldn’t it be nice to see
your black and white photos in full color? Learning to
create and edit old photos is fairly easy and very
worthwhile. Digitally restored photos can be used to make
digital scrapbooks, posted to Web sites, shared through
email, and printed for gift-giving or display.
To achieve this effect, we
will need to colorize using Paint Shop Pro. According to
Bill Brewer, “colorizing is a feature built into PSP
that keeps the luminance values (the bright and dark parts
that make up the recognizable image) and colors the image
with one color. The image to be colorized needs to have a
color depth of 16.7 million colors, and it can be in full
color to start with (reduction to grayscale is not
required before colorizing). Using that command brings up
a dialog box where you have control over the hue and
saturation, with a preview. I suggest you DON'T use that
menu item to colorize images. Instead use the more
powerful HSL adjustments accessed with the
Colors>Adjust>Hue/Saturation/Lightness... command.
That way, you have complete control over the
hue/saturation/lightness, and the color preview is much
better than what you get with Colorize.”
To start off, get your
photo ready. Begin by scanning your black and white photo
into your PC. Make sure that your picture is straight and
if not, use Paint Shop Pro’s Straighten tool to
“uncrook” the image. Next then would be running the
One Step Photo Fix by clicking the Enhance Photo button in
the Photo toolbar atop the screen and choose One Step
Photo Fix. Try to clean up whatever dirt or scratch that
you may see in the picture.
Now, moving on to the next
part. Working in layers. Choose the Layers, Duplicate tab
to make a duplicate of the image you want to colorize. We
can now make color changes to the top layer without
affecting the original image underneath, letting us adjust
the intensity of the colorization by playing with the
layer's opacity.
Now for the final part, you
may choose to use either the Freehand Selection toll in
Smart Edge mode or you may opt to use the Magic Wand. Set
Feather to about 1 pixel, and select one of the faces.
Once done, click on the Flood Fill tool and set the Blend
Mode to Color in the toolbar at the top of the screen. For
a typical Caucasian skin tone, set the Red, Green, and
Blue levels to about 215, 190, and 150, respectively, then
click OK. Now click Flood Fill to colorize the selected
face. You can repeat this process for all of the skin in
the image.
Then select the clothing
and background and add color to as much or as little as
you wish. When you're done with the image, you might want
to adjust the overall intensity of the colorization. To do
that, make sure the Layer Palette is open (if it isn't,
choose View, Palettes, Layers) and then double-click on
the Copy of Background layer--this is the one on top that
we've been painting. Then you can use the Opacity slider
in the layer's dialog box to change the color effect. When
you're satisfied, click OK to keep your changes.
Above simple instructions
from Dave Johnson is very easy to follow and is very
helpful for the particular purpose.
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About
The Author
Ariel
Velasco goes by the author alias of Paul
Hood. This author is into books and
writing. Reading is an essential part of
his life and this has lent a considerable
influence in his writing. Well traveled
and would always want to travel more. He
loves learning more about people and their
ways. Took up a Bachelor of Arts in
Sociology to further this fascination and
had a fulfilling educational experience
having been exposed to a wide spectrum of
people. Always ready for new opportunities
to learn and have a great deal of interest
in different fields of expertise.
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