colorization issue

Hey Guys!

A week before I was surfing through the internet and I found a nice ps tutorial about colorizing old b/w pictures. Cause my mother is very ill at the moment I thought I could do her a favour when I colorize one of her old photos. On the picture is my mother (the time she looked good ;o) and her brother.

Colorizing my mother was no problem but my uncle...
Now I'm sitting in front of my monitor for a week and I have still problems with this son of ... of my grandma. His eyes, his lips, even his hair and his skin and his jacket and his teeth. I don't find the right color and I don't know where his eyes begin and where the surrounding skin ends.

Now I managed to turn this picture:



into this one:




here you can download the pictures in full size:
http://insane.cagm.de/bilder/bw_full.jpg
http://insane.cagm.de/bilder/col_full.jpg

Unfortunately I can't give you the *.psd file cause it's about 80mb big.
Sorry for the "bad" quality of the pictures. I had to photograph them with my digicam. I used this tutorial for my colorization job.

I hope you could understand me. English is not my native language. Can you help me anyway? ;P :rolleyes: :D

First thing you need to do is colour correct the B&W version.

Duplicate your layer and add a threshold adjustment layer. Find the black and the white points with the colour picker tool (not the eyedropper) and then discard the threshold layer. Make a curves/levels adjustment layer and use the marks on the canvas and the white and black eyedroppers (use precise cursor) to find true B&W points.

If you need any more detailed info then ask away, I rather skimped on a lot of details.

If you want skin tone charts then look for Bruce beards hair and skin colour charts.

As always with retouching issues can I recommend another site, packed full of tutorials and information and helpful pros and am's alike. - www.retouchpro.com

Looking closer I can tell that you have photographed it, the mans neck shows signs of the papers slightly embossed pattern whereas the woman is fine. If you can with any accuracy of result, turn the photo upside down, reshoot and amalgamate the two in PS.

Thank you very much for your fast reply!

First I answer your 2nd post, because it's easier :=)
Its a good idea to make two shots to eliminate the pattern. But I haven't got the photo at home (this is the reason why I had to mug the photograph) so this has to wait. But no problem. When I have the correct color layers I can easily change the b&w background layer.

Now I'll come to your first post:
I have created the treshold adjustment layer and grouped it with my b&w layer. My first confusion: this looks carzy! Is THIS colour corrected? Of course it's not. Normally I correct the colors with curves and level correction, so I read your next sentence and voila! I just need this adjustment layer to find the brightest and darkest pixels in the picture. Right?
So I moved the slider to the right until there were just a few white pixels left. Treshold Level: 211. The same in the other direction. Treshold Level: 36.

First Question: Which tool is the color picker tool? Do you mean the Color Sampler Tool? (PS 7.0)

"Make a curves/levels adjustment layer and use the marks on the canvas and the white and black eyedroppers (use precise cursor) to find true B&W points."

2nd Question: The curves or the levels adjustment layer? Both? Which marks on which canvas? What is the precise cursor?

Ok, the 2nd question contains 3 questions.

3rd Question: Am I able to colorize for example the lips when I have color corrected the b&w image? I already played with some adjustment layers on the lips but this didn't help me very much.

Where do I find Bruces charts?

Thank you for the link. I will give it a try now. Perhaps the page can answer some of the questions above so you don't have to write so much ;o)

thanks a lot again!

Here, I went ahead and fixed it up for you by coloring it with the normal airbrush, and then lowering the opacity.

googled bruce beard and this was first entry
http://www.retouchpro.com/pages/colors.html

For your first and second question, when you have threshold layer going,
adjust for shadows, then SHIFT-click in an area which starts to show black.
Now move slider to highlights and then SHIFT-click in area which starts to show white.
Click OK, and your image should now have two points labelled 1 and 2.
(delete threshold layer, as only used for a guide)

Now add either levels or curve adjustment layer, personal pref here.
Click Set black point eyedropper, then click on point 1.
Click Set white point eyedropper, then click on point 2.

For precise cursor, goto edit >> preference >> display / cursor
then on other cursor, set to precise.

Happy colouring :-)

Which tool is the color picker tool? Do you mean the Color Sampler Tool?

yes.

As for the precise cursor - I meant use Caps Lock to change the cursor into a cross hair (you may have this option on as a preference anyway)

As for the B&W points, on the threshold layer move the slider all the way until only a couple of pixels of Black or White are showing and mark them with the colour sampler. Then discard threshold layer.......

Cheers for explaining camel

This is amazing! Looks much better than before. Although I had already corrected the original a bit. The image looks sharper now.

Thank you for this trick! Now I try to colour the lips. I still don't know what to do with the eyes but before I despair I can put him sunglasses on. :D

@Atomicfog: This looks realy crazy *g*

no probs hermit, and thnx for the tip. Really cool way to see where and which pixals are being cut out, really usefull before curves adjustment :-)

as for sunglasses on the fella, he would look just like Tom Cruise mez think :D

personally, I think the eyes are ok, because it is more low-key photo, than a high-key photo.
What you could do with a very small soft edge brush tool set to white, is add some catch lights to the eyes. Zoom in and add just one click where some lightness is or should be. Alter opacity if this is to harsh.
This will do wonders, even if colour isn't present.

(for high-rez image, brush number 192 in standard brush set is pretty cool for this. Also usefull brush for sparkle on chrome etc)

OK, I played a bit around and this is my result. It's difficult to recognize structures with such a low resolution. I couldn't see where the gums end and the teeth begin so I had to guess. I made the teeth a bit yellow cause this looks better than grey.
For the eyes I photographed my own iris and pasted them over the man ones with a low opacity.

I am not very happy with the result but it's better than grey eyes and teeth. Do you agree?

Thank you very much for your help and your quick response!