How to Add Color to a Black and White Image with Adobe Photoshop

There are times that you may want to add color to an image to restore color to a faded image or add color to a black and white image. This original photograph from 1974 was printed on a warm tone sepia paper, Agfa Portriga Rapid. The image was scanned as a black and white photo so the sepia tone was lost and the image doesn't have the same warm tone as the original. This model had beautiful blue eyes that were, of course, not present in the original. I thought while I was at it, I should try to capture her true eye color in the sepia tone image.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Adobe Photoshop 6.0 or later running on a MAC or PC computer
• A copy of an image for experimentation

1. 
   Enlarge the area to create the mask.

   Open the image in Adobe Photoshop. Chane the "Mode" to CMYK since this image will be printed to simulate the original. In order to prevent her eyes from becoming sepia, when we adjust the color it is necessary to create a mask in a separate layer. Enlarge the image so it will be easier to paint the mask.

2. 
   Creating a quick mask .

   Once you have enlarged your working area hit the "Q" key to enter the quick mask mode. Select the "Paintbrush" tool and select a circular brush that will enable you to easily paint the eye. Notice we have not included the pupil of the eye, only the part of the eye that contains color. When you are done, hit "Q" again to exit quick mask mode and you will notice the eye is surrounded by a dotted line. This is the area that will be masked.

3. 
   New layer.

   Under "Selection," click on "Save Selection," which will bring up the NEW LAYER dialog box allowing you to save the layer and adjust opacity if necessary.

4. 
   New Adjustment Layer

   Once you have saved the layer, select "Layer/New Adjustment Layer" and select color balance. This will open up the "Color Balance" palette. We selected midtone since the majority of the tones in this picture are midtones. Drag the CMYK sliders and you will see the color change in your image. First we adjusted the sliders to give us the blue eye color.

5. 

   The image now has the original warm sepia tones of the original. Notice the changes are predominantly in the midtones, the value we selected. The highlights still remain white. You may notice that some of the quarter tone highlights in the eye have picked up some of the sepia tone. This can be corrected by creating another mask and color balancing the highlights.

Tips & Warnings

• Change your paint brush size while painting the mask. Use a larger brush for the broad strokes and smaller brushes for the details. Use the feathering option to blend the mask into adjacent objects or the background.
• Always work with a copy of your image to preserve your original image archive.

Resources

• Adobe Photoshop