Photoshop Tutorial: Cool Photo Recolouring

Hello, this is a Photoshop tutorial on how to recolour a black and white photo. Please note that this is not for restoration purposes, only to make the photo look more interesting than before.

Also, I will not spoon-feed each and every detail to you, so that you may use your own preferences instead of mine. This tutorial only gives directions, and not every detail on how it’s done.

For recolouration purposes, I will be using this photo of a flower, taken by me.

Open any photo of your choice colour or black and white.

1) If you have a black and white photo, skip this step. If you have a colour photo, duplicate the layer by pressing Ctrl+J, then press Ctrl+Shift+U. This will remove all colours from the photo (a process called Desaturation).

2) Decide what part of the photo you want to colour. I want to do the flower first, and then the rest of the photo afterwards. Press Z to switch to the zoom tool. Zoom in to the photo, enough so that you can make an accurate selection.

3) Use your favourite selection tool to make a selection around the desired part you want to recolour. I am using the Pen Tool, as it’s really easy to make precise selections in it.

3a) If you are using something other than the Pen Tool, skip all this and go to step 4. To use the pen tool, press P to activate it. Make sure the Paths option is selected (See above).

3b) Now to use the pen tool, click on the place where you want to start the selection, and then keep clicking the border of your to-be selection, so as to form a path with the pen tool. The more you zoom in to use this, the more accurate it’s going to be, but the more time it will take.

3c) As you can see in the photo above, I've switched to the colour view (by turning off the 'eye’ icon next to the black and white layer), as it is easier to see the definite boundaries in colour, making it easier to plot the path.

For people using black and white photos, you can increase the contrast to make the boundaries more definitive. First you will want to duplicate the black and white layer, so that you don’t change the contrast of this layer. Do this by pressing Ctrl+J. Select the new layer, and click Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast. Change the values, play around with them, to find something which makes the boundaries sharper, and then go back path-plotting with the pen tool.

3d) After your path is ready, right-click anywhere on the photo (making sure that the pen tool is selected) and choose the Make Selection... option.

Then, if you made a high contrast one in black and white, delete that layer(right click on the layer > delete layer).

If you used a colour photo to complete your path by hiding the black and white layer, turn it back on by clicking the space where the eye was in the layer tab. 

You should have a complete selection like this:

 

4) Now for the fun part... the colouring! For the colouring, first make a new layer on top of everything. You can do this by pressing Ctrl+Shift+N.  Change the blend mode from normal to overlay. You will be using this layer to do all the colouring, so make sure to select it in the layers tab (bottom-right of workspace by default). For the colouring brush, press B and switch to the Brush tool. I used a 300px soft brush to colour this one. To change the brush, simply right-click anywhere on the photo, and choose the brush. You can change the size by sliding the slider above the brush selector too. Then, select the colour by changing the foreground colour, and begin colouring inside the selection. You will notice that the colour doesn’t flow outside the selection.

NOTE: Should you lose the selection at any time, you can get it back by pressing Ctrl+Z (undo), or Ctrl+Alt+Z (for going further back).

5) After colouring, the result should look like this:

BUT WE ARE NOT DONE YET!

6) Make sure that the layer on which the colour is present is selected, then go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Change the radius of blurring till the colour bleeds a bit out of the shape and makes a sort of a glow around it.

7) Okay! So you are done as far as this shape goes! For further colouring, repeat steps 3 to 6, and make sure that you create a new layer for each different area to be coloured!

I have coloured the whole photo, and here it is:

And here is the original once again, for comparison:

Do leave links to photos in the comments if you have attempted this tutorial, I would love to see them!

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