Photoshop Elements 3: The Missing Manual

Colorizing a Black and White Photo

So far, you've read about ways to keep color in an image while you make part of it black and white. But what about when you've got a black and white photo to begin with and you want to add color to it? It's very easy to color your black and white photos with Elements. For instance, you can give an old photo the sort of hand-tinted effect you sometimes see in antique prints, as shown in Figure 9-20.

You can easily color things with Elements. Before you start tinting your photo, you should first make any repairs. See the earlier section "Fixing Blemishes" and, for fixes to the exposure, see Chapter 7.

1. Make sure your photo is in RGB mode.

   Go to Image → Mode → RGB. Your photo must be in RGB mode or you can't color it. Create a new layer in Color mode.

   Go to Layer → New → Layer and select Color as the layer mode. By choosing Color as your mode, you can paint on the layer and the image details still show through.

   

   Figure 9-18. Elements not only lets you edit your layer mask, but gives you two different ways to see it.Top: To see the masked area in black, Alt+click (Option-click) the right thumbnail for the layer in the Layers palette.Bottom: To see the masked area in red, Alt+Shift+click (Option-Shift-click) the layer's thumbnail.

2. Paint on the layer.

   Use the Brush tool (page 270) and choose a color in the Foreground color square (page 174). Keep ...