Colorize your old Black and White photos with Photoshop

Well you must be seeing many of your local studios' ads that say Black&White to Color. Well don't waste money by paying them. You can do it at you home with just a PC and Photoshop installed. Get your photos scanned and open it in Photoshop.



Note: I am using a pic of our lovely Ash for this tut. (Also this may not be the simplest way of getting around things.)

1) Open your photo.



2) Image---->Mode---->RGB Color (if it's not already in that mode)



OK. Now in this pic there are various elements that need to be colorized. There is skin, her dress, the background etc. (well, it'll depend on your image)



3) Take out your Lasso Tool and make a selection around the skin area.

TIP: When using the Lasso Tool, select while using Shift key to add to you existing selection. This comes in handy while selecting different parts together like face, hand etc. Similarly use the Alt key to minus from the existing selection.



4) Right-click inside the selected area and click the Layer via Copy option. (We are doing this coz we don't want to damage the original image.) . In the Layers window (Window---->Show Layers) right-click on the newly created layer and click Layer Properties and rename the layer to Skin.



5) Image---->Adjust---->Variations. Feel free to play with the colors here and select the most appropriate color for the skin.