Color black and white photos with Photoshop
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In today's life, many people's homes have some old photos of the past, but limited to the objective conditions at the time, most of these photos are black and white. The people in the photos are not young, but they have died. If they want to relive or remember their style, they always feel the lack of a true color. It is a pity. There are many ways to color these photos, but it is not an easy task to make the colors very realistic. Here is a way to color black and white photos with Photoshop computer software. Personal feelings can be made more realistic.
First, the basic principles and methods of coloring
A person's skin color changes naturally in the photo, and the color is complex and rich. But in theory, we can assume that a person's skin tone and saturation are only related to the race, but for the same person, we can assume that the two parameters of the entire skin color are basically fixed. However, the reason why the skin color of the portrait photo is rich and varied is the influence of external light, that is, the brightness, and the color of the same brightness area is basically the same. According to this assumption, we only need to color the skin color of the person in the photo according to the brightness parameter. Finally, you can do a natural transition.
Second, the coloring example
1. Scan the photo into your computer and convert it to Lab mode. Since the brightness will become a major identification parameter during operation, the Lab mode can be used to operate the luminance channel (L channel) to meet our different color requirements depending on the brightness. Let's take a photo of a child as an example.
2. Make a selection and use the selection tool to select all the human skins in the portrait. Use “Layer” → “New” → “Layerviacut”. In this way, the skin of the person to be used can be layered separately, and the human hair can be separately constructed into a layer in the same manner.
3. Specify the current operation layer as the layer where the skin is located, turn to the channel panel, and select “Brightness channel (L channel). Specify the foreground color in the toolbar as L:95, a:0, b:0. Execute the command in the menu. : "Select" → "Color Range", the tolerance parameter is set to be between 20~30, so that all the areas in the picture in this brightness range can be selected.
4. Call the menu command: "Select" → "Load Selection", in the pop-up dialog box, select the intersection option (that is, the last Intersectwith selection, the same below) so that all the selections are in the skin range.
5. In the channel control panel, specify the Lab synthesis channel (ie the first channel). Specify the foreground color as: L: 95 unchanged, a: 5, b: 19.
6. Use the brush tool in the toolbox. The color mode of the tool is set to: Color. Set the brush's brushes to 60 or more (can be larger, which will increase the coloring speed). Note: Color mode is a mode that maintains the brightness, draws and creates the resulting color using the hue and saturation of the specified foreground color.
7. Use the brush tool to paint in the selection of the image until all the selections have been painted.
8. Cancel the selection and start coloring the next brightness. Select the L channel in the channel panel, set the foreground color to LAB90, 0, 0, and call the menu “Select” → “ColorRange” to set the color tolerance value to 30. , make a constituency.
9. Call the menu item: "Select" → "Load Selection", select the intersection option in the pop-up dialog box, select the skin of this brightness range.
10. Select the LAB composite channel in the channel panel and change the foreground color to L:90, a:9, b:27.
11. Use the brush tool to color the selection.
12. Start coloring the next brightness, select the L channel in the channel panel, set the foreground color to: LAB80, 0, 0, call the menu “Select” → “ColorRange”, set the color tolerance value to 30, press OK to make a selection.
13. Call the menu item: "Select" → "Load Selection", select the intersection option in the pop-up dialog box, select the skin of this brightness range.
14. Select the LAB composite channel in the channel panel and change the foreground color to L:90, a:15, b:29.
15. Use the brush tool to color the selection area.
16. Cancel the selection, start coloring the next brightness, select the L channel in the channel panel, set the foreground color to: LAB60, 0, 0, call the menu “Select” → “ColorRange”, set the color tolerance value to 30. Press OK to make the selection.
17. Call the menu item: "Select" → "Load Selection", select the intersection option in the pop-up dialog box, select the skin of this brightness range.
18. Select the LAB composite channel in the channel panel and change the foreground color to L:60, a:22, b:27.
19. Use the brush tool to color the selection area.
20. Cancel the selection, start coloring the next brightness, select the L channel in the channel panel, set the foreground color to: LAB50, 0, 0, call the menu “Select” → “ColorRange”, set the color tolerance value to 50, press OK to make the selection.
21. Call the menu item: "Select" → "Load Selection", select the intersection option in the pop-up dialog box, select the skin of this brightness range.
22. Select the LAB composite channel in the channel panel and change the foreground color to L:50, a:22, b:23.
23. Use the brush tool to color the selection area.
24. Start coloring the next brightness, select the L channel in the channel panel, set the foreground color to: LAB35, 0, 0, call the menu "Select" → "Color Range", set the color tolerance value to 50, Press OK to make the selection.
25. Call the menu item: "Select" → "Load Selection", select the intersection option in the pop-up dialog box, select the skin of this brightness range.
26. Select the LAB composite channel in the channel panel and change the foreground color to L:35, a; 23, b: 28.
27. Use the brush tool to color the selection area.
28. Cancel the selection, start coloring the next brightness, select the L channel in the channel panel, set the foreground color to: LAB20, 0, 0, call the menu “Select” → “ColorRange”, set the color tolerance value to 50, press OK to make the selection.
29. Call the menu item: "Select" → "Load Selection", select the intersection option in the pop-up dialog box, select the skin of this brightness range.
30. Select the LAB synthesis channel in the channel panel and change the foreground color to L:20, a:21, b:26.
31. Use the brush tool to color the selection area.
32. So far, the first job of coloring has been basically completed, and the selection is cancelled. But the problem now is that the color transition between different brightness is very blunt, and the next step is natural transition processing.
33. In the channel control panel, select the a channel, call the menu command: “Filter” → “Blur” → “GaussianBlur”, adjust the value of the parameter Radius, so as not to see the traces on the skin as well (generally in 12~16) )between.
Do the same for the b channel. In the Channels panel, check: LAB Synthetic Channel Viewing Effects. The same method can be used for other parts of the image: hair, clothes, lips, etc., and will not be described in detail here.
For those who have no coloring experience, how to determine the color of a certain brightness is a difficult thing. At the beginning, you can open a color photo of a person with the same characteristics (a person of similar age) and switch to Lab mode. Use the mouse to detect the corresponding reference value in the picture, the value can be seen in the Info Control Panel.