Editing Techniques | B&W to Colour

[Hixle]

Bonjour,

Not strictly photography, but thought that this may be of interest to a few of you. I've been thinking of setting up a photo restoration service for a while now, and one thing that I've fancied teaching myself is how to convert a previous B&W photo into colour.

Spent 45 minutes or so on my lunchbreak yesterday playing around with a very simple, b&w picture sourced from google. It is, of course, an infamous picture of Jim Morrison.

Before:

After:

Quick 50/50:

As you can see, it's not 100%, but I'm getting there. Decided to use my own initiative, rather than follow one of the many guides; I generally find they often overcomplicate things. The hair was a struggle, due to the small size of the original that I sourced mainly.

Quite fancy trying something a little more complex this weekend, possibly trying one of my grandparents wedding pictures or something

Anyway, enjoy!

Luke.

 

[Scrooge]

Didn't even know you could do that lol

 

[Joe#]

That's pretty impressive.

 

[Hixle]

Didn't even know you could do that lol

Magic, init

Cheers Joe.

 

[Chapppers11]

This may sound stupid, but I assume there is/will be quite a bit of guess work involved in this?

 

[Tim.]

Wasn't Jim Morrison black?

 

[Hixle]

This may sound stupid, but I assume there is/will be quite a bit of guess work involved in this?

Absolutely mate. The original shading helps with the skin tone, but that's about it. I assumed he wasn't an avid user of lipstick so pure guesswork for the lips; just went with the same as the skin with a tad more red and increased saturation in the end. Googled the eye colour and matched it the best I could.

Wasn't Jim Morrison black?

Lol! Damn!

 

[Brazo]

I think you've done it very well, although I'm not a fan of the technique though as it always looks a bit fake regardless of skill level.