Natural looking colorization??

[G Mantero]

Hello, all!

I posted a few times many, many moons ago, but haven't gotten much time to keep up lately. However, I'd be crazy not to ask the question that continually plagues me concerning photographs. I do restoration work, which I love. My clients seem very pleased, and I'm happy doing it. My biggest shortcoming is colorization of photos. I've tried various peoples' tips, tricks, etc. to get a nice, natural looking color on black and white or sepia photos, but mine always look like they've been "colored." Not in a subtle, ethereal way like well done hand colorizations.

So shoot all your best at me. It's an aspect that I'd really like to get into for my clients, but I've always been of the mind that I'd rather tell them No than do work that I'm not 100% proud of!

Thanks!
Gina

[Doug Nelson]

Attach a sample of youcr colorization work that you're unhappy with and we'll try to help. Good colorization is tough, though. There's no set of tricks that will guarantee natural-looking results. It also requires a great deal of taste and finesse.

[G Mantero]

I'll look for something this weekend and try to post it. I guess my problem is that, while I have an extensive arsenal of tools at my disposal for bad/damaged, etc. photos, I don't have the same array of tools to colorize.

I.E., if I get a photograph that's badly scratched, there are about 2 dozen ways I can try to get rid of the scratches in the most natural way possible.

What I'm looking for is just a big inventory of tricks to try while I'm getting my feet wet in the whole colorization pool. You know, like layering color upon color in order to get different results, changing blending modes, etc.

I'm like a sponge when it comes to stuff like this--I want to over-inform myself so that I can handle pretty much anything that comes along.

[DJ Dubovsky]

G
Nice to see you back. You might check out this link for a good tutorial on getting rid of cracks. You can also download an action for it. It might make a nice start to your collection of tips and tricks. Check out the other tutorials and there's a good tips section in the forum under the Restoration, Retouching, and Manipulation forum.
DJ

[CJ Swartz]

Gina,
Look at the top right hand section of this webpage and click on "search", then fill in natural colorization -- you'll find some threads with some good tips.

I tried to make a link to one of the threads, but it didn't work. The "search" button will work, tho....

[Sharon Brunson]

Gina, Jim Conway posted this link in another thread. Looks like it might help you. Mostly I think, it is about directly coloring.

http://www.handcolor.com/

Let us know whatever methods you find that work best.

Sharon

[OhThatGirl2001]

Hi Gina,

I'm fairly new here and have just started hand coloring myself. I have found this tutorial to make a great deal of sense and it's what got me started.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~willshak/photocolor/

http://www.espressographics.com/text/levels.html

(The later is a great resource page for restoration)


You might also want to try looking in the alt.binaries. I've found a great number of tips and discusssions about colorization at:

comp.graphics.apps.paint-shop-pro

alt.graphics.photoshop

Both have discussions regarding colorization right now and one even mentions a link to good ole' retouchpro.

Good Luck,

If you have any more questions, I'd be happy to help

[NIK]

I use an alpha channel created from the black and white image. I also use other photos to create my colors. That way I don't get the solid color fill look. Colors as the go in and out of shadow actual change in saturation and hue. The image alpha channel can help isolate the shadow areas so you can change your added color.

On this example I was able to add a sky by using the channels. I pasted in a sky image. I activated the image alpha channel. I cut and then pasted to a new layer. deleting the layer that hid the trees. then went in and erased all the useless parts of sky.

NIK

[DJ Dubovsky]

Thats fantastic Nik. You should post that in the gallery. You did a great job of getting the sky in without loosing the details in the tree and I don't see any halos. The coloring is excellent also. Hey, have you considered a tutorial on it? Would be a good one.
DJ

[CJ Swartz]

NIK,

I agree with DJ -- beautifully done with no signs of it 'being done'. I'd love to see your tutorial for this... hint, hint...

[Vikki]

Beautiful job, Nik!

[Sanda]

I must agree with everybody else, a wonderful job and I too would love to read a tutorial on it. (is that enough pressure yet?)

[Jim Conway]

If this type of work is a repeatable pattern for you, your fortunes are made!!! One of the best I've seen from digital work.

Jim Conway

[Ed_L]

Super job Nik, and another request for a tutorial. How many does it take?

Ed

[stuart h]

Nik
This is wonderful stuff...SO WHERE ARE YOUR TIPS!!! Seriously,
your work looks very naturalistic. Congratulations.

[G Mantero]

NIK--

Beautifully done! I agree that I'd love to see a tut on this, because the natural look is precisely what I have some difficulty with. Selections, etc., are no problem. It just seems that I lack in some artistic quality that yields natural-looking color (I know, I still haven't posted an example. I promise I will open one up for critiques).

One line in your response intrigues me, Nik:

"The image alpha channel can help isolate the shadow areas so you can change your added color. "

What do you mean by that? I do most of my work in saved alpha channels, but I'm just not quite certain what you mean by isolating the shadow areas using them.

??
Gina

[NIK]

I will do a Tutorial. Just give me a couple of days to lay it out. I'll try to lay it out for both Corel and Adobe users.

Do I need to make a kink here or do I need to add it somewhere else?

Thank you all for your good words. It's always nice to be able to send my boss a link to such praise.

NIK

[Doug Nelson]

If you publish it yourself, just post a link here, or even in our links section.

If you'd like it published here, just send the text and the support images to me via email.

And bravo! We need more tutorials from our members.

[G Mantero]

Here are two attempts--I'm not fond of either one, but if you folks who do this frequently can at least tell me that I'm on the right track or that I stink at this, I'll feel better.

Any critiques, suggestions, or hints will be very much appreciated. I don't do colorization, really. My forte is restoration and/or retouching, so this is new territory for me. Help!!

[G Mantero]

Couldn't upload both at the same time. Here's (bad) example #2:

[OhThatGirl2001]

I don't think your colorizations are that bad. I would have added a new level layer adjustment to bring out the color and add a little pop as it is a bit washed. There were a few bricks next to the bush that weren't colored and perhaps coloring the boots and pants of the man would be a nice touch. As far as the skin tone, perhaps you can fool around with the blend mode and try multiply, or color, overlay on a picture like this would look too light. I fool around with the blend modes until I get the color I want. I also add a small amount of blush and highlights with the airbrush set to a very low opacity. It give the facial area more depth. The baby's hair is a bit dark, but it's the same thing... fool around with the opacity and blend mode until you get the look you want. Honestly, I don't think it's that bad!

Lisa

[jeaniesa]

Hi Gina,

I also don't think your colorizations are all that bad. I think they just need a bit more "pop". One way to do that is to do a levels adjustment - that is particularly needed on the one with the man and young girl IMO. Also, your skin tones look just slightly off. I played around with both photos and selected just the skin tones. I added some red coloring and increased the saturation slightly and to my eyes it looked more natural.

In the one with the girl sitting in the chair, I also think a little "blush" on the cheeks, tip of the nose and chin helps too. I like to use an airbrush at a very low opacity in color mode.

I took the liberty of working on the other photo for a few minutes. What I did was:
1. levels adjustment
2. improve the skin tones like I mentioned above (copied the selections to their own layer)
3. increased the saturation of the rest of the photo significantly (something like +40 I think).

I've attached that photo here so you can see the difference.

One other thing... The photos themselves look like there isn't much detail in the highlights. I think that makes it difficult to make the photo look like a really high-quality color photo. I could be wrong and would appreciate hearing other's ideas on that.

Jeanie

[Sharon Brunson]

Gorgeous Nik.

[OhThatGirl2001]

Hi Gina,

I would agree with Jeaniesa, just needs a little more pop. I worked on it for a bit, but the image size is very small and the fine details were hard to see. However, while I was working on it, I wondered what method you used to color it. I notice around the mans hand is pretty rough, also around the bricks and leaves. I am lousy at using masks, so I tend to make a selection and then make a new layer and add to color there. That way I can fool around with the blending mode till I get what I want. As well as having the selection, I can use variations or hue/saturation or contrast, etc. adjust on the selection.

Here is the same picture with a level adjustment and my coloring the mans pants, and boots. When I finished a merge the image and did a overall saturation +20 - just to enhance the color. Again, it was too small of an image to get into the fine detail.

Lisa
P.S. The skintone on my one is a little too orange. I wasn't happy with the skintone, but I wanted you to get the idea.

[OhThatGirl2001]

Hi Again!

I found a great tutorial on colorizing that might help you. It involves the process of masks but is very easy to follow.

Let me know if this helps you.

http://www.debdsweb.com/files/colortut.pdf

Lisa

[stuart h]

Lisa
thanx 4 that link.
One of the things I like about PShop is that the same effect can be achieved in more than one way. Colourising is a good example

• using variations
• painting in color mode
• with fill layers

or a technique I've started using...hue/sat adj layers. Basically I make a selection of the area I want to color & create a new adj layer for each area. Using the mask I can refine my selections.
Also, using layer masks means I can 'hide' backgrounds etc to drop new ones in. This is my (current) preferred way of working.
Here's an example attached.

BTW Gina I find that if you partially colour an image it works best if you are using the colour to add a dramatic or subtle effect. If I recolour I'm usually asked by the client to "make it look like a colour photo" so I tend to work the whole image. And don't put down what you have done, we are all here to learn & share, there are no rights or wrongs which is what is cool!

[G Mantero]

Thanks to all for the suggestions--I agree that it needs more "pop"; however, the problem I am having is that when the image has more pop, the skintones simply aren't believable when printed.

I know my masks are somewhat rough--generally speaking I spend much more time on them to get them perfect. I kind of threw these on here to illustrate the "one-tone wonder" that I think my colorization has.....

What I guess I'm asking is, do you all use layer upon layer of various colors at different levels to get a natural-looking skintone? When I look at my own skin, it's pretty smooth; however, it's not all just one color--there are different shades here and there. How can that be duplicated on a photo? Does it boil down to taking a hand-coloring course in order to get the finer points?

Take, for instance, the image of the young girl--I want to use very subtle colorization here, to replicate the type of hand-coloring that was available in that time period. I added a wash of pinky-peach to her cheeks (not really visible in the small file size I downloaded, but just visible on the print, which is just what I wanted). I also worked in some small highlights in her hair (also not visible on the web).

I'm having problems with the skin and hair on the man/baby picture. When I use the same basic technique as I used on the little girl, the skin just looks.....plastic or fake or something. Just not REALISTIC! Do I just need to keep plugging away? Am I close-ish but just don't know it?

[CJ Swartz]

Gina says: "the problem I am having is that when the image has more pop, the skintones simply aren't believable when printed."

Don't know exactly what you mean by this -- if you apply the adjustment layer (Levels, Curves, etc.) before you add the color, then the contrast will be improved without affecting any colorization. Or is there something about coloring a higher-contrast image that makes it look unnatural to you?

Count me among the folks here who look forward to seeing NIK's tutorial and learn about "isolating the shadow areas using the alpha channel". NIK also uses "other photos to create my colors". Choosing an appropriate hue and saturation level of color is certainly part of the equation, and using colors from other images that we admire is certainly one strategy to making an acceptable choice.

Your skin color choices looked pretty good to me -- adjusting the saturation level down (or up) can assist in making skin tones look more realistic.

I enjoy colorizing, but have a great deal to learn. I'm a fan of Kim Anderson's work (the B/W children's photos with just one or two colorized elements), and hope to learn by viewing many of his works. There are a number of hand coloring books listed on that handcolor.com site recommended to you.

[G Mantero]

I know I'm not explaining myself very well, but there's just a feeling I get when I look at a beautifully colored portrait--it looks natural and believable.

Adjustment layers are some of my best restoration friends It's not coloring a higher-contrast image that looks unnatural--it's trying to get those differing shades and nuances that real skin has so that the digital images do not look "fake." I think that when I begin to color, I end up washing my colors out in an attempt to keep them from looking plastic. Obviously this is not an absolute must; I see gorgeous digitally tinted photos all the time. I, like Nik, use other photographs from which to choose my colors--if it exists in nature, who am I to use the color picker? The problem is that using the color blending mode with a particular color leaves everything selected as that color. I need to find methods to add some life to my colorization.

***Hence, my question as to whether folks layer colors/masks/etc. on top of each other using different modes and colors in order to find a true, realistic color.***

Skintones give me the most difficulty--people will accept almost any other color in a portrait as long as the skintones look natural and believable to them.

[jeaniesa]

Gina,

I don't think you're as far off as you think you are. To get the color I want, I usually fool around with the skin tone charts in the Resources section:
http://www.retouchpro.com/pages/colors.html
But I often have to fool around with the opacity and sometimes the Hue in addition. I use a separate layer for each color that I paint so that I can adjust each one separately. That also allows me to change the opacity for each one to get just the shade I want. (My experience is that I usually drastically reduce opacity of the layers with the skin tones, but not so much other colors.)

To get the variations in skin tone, I use both the dodge/burn tools (at very low opacity) as well as hand painting in additional color - esp. on faces. For example, I usually at a little pinkish-red to the cheeks at least. And depending on the setting, sometimes the nose, chin and forehead also (very slight). I use an airbrush at very low opacity.

I think when there is a lot of contrast in a photo, the subtle shading sometimes gets lost, so the way I deal with it is to paint the shading back in by hand. I've never tried blending layers with multiple colors, so don't know how that would work.

Hope this helps a little.
Jeanie