colorization issue

Good work so far. The hair and his eyesare all thats left to do, then all you need to do is tend to the dust spots and artifacts.

Top notch effort insane! Did you follow them colour guides for skin tones, or used your own instinct?

For all your hard work not going to waste, you should take photo to local photo lab and get it printed on matt paper.
Good trick also, with pasting your own iris. I thought of doing this with my scanner, but thought better of it...LOL

rofl. Why didn't you do it? Scaning your iris could be an one-time experience.

I have read 2 tuts about colorization.this tutorial and this one. I combined these two methods but as always I used my own experience. The hair for example is a combination of 3 adjustment layers and the teeth and eyes are lightened with the dodge tool. I also used different blending modes e.g. soft light and overlay.

To find the skin tones I did the following:

Woman: Intuition. I adjusted the curves until it looked good as explained in the first tutorial. Then I read the 2nd tutorial and achieved the same result in much less time with gradient maps and a slight adjustment of hue and saturation.

Man: Then I dublicated this layer and made it a bit lighter so that both had not exactly the same skin color. By the way: I love masks! You can always modify them when you see you have forgotten to color a part and if you blur them a bit it looks very realistic. Look at the smooth transition from my mothers skin to her hair. Bluring with a radius of 2-5 pixels works wonders.

I have also thought of printing it on matt paper. It's easier then removing the pattern. I hope they can do this. Perhaps I can also filch the picture from my grandma and scan it at home. Wish me luck *putting on black skiing cap* - operation robbing my grandma begins - "everybody be cool. This is a robery!"

lol...good luck insane. "In my experience there is no such thing as luck."
Only razor sharp timing, and a backup plan

With all that hard work you put in, I feel motivated to do smth of my own.
I have yet to tackle a photo colourization of that magnitude. Mostly sepia stuff.
Now to find b/w photo....
Stay tuned for a ton of questions :D

I'll be there. Now after two weeks I can tell you what you should NOT do.

Newest problem: now I scanned the original. The levels and everything is perfect. No correction needed. BUT: The Perspective is slight different and now I have to change all my masks. I could cry :(

"Good luck" camel with your picture. May the force be with you!

lol..the force must have been with you, if you got to scan the image.
Perspective different, and the flare across top half of the photo gone?
Good thing you used mask's, as the alternative could have been worse ;)

I hope you dont mind, but I showed a couple of my students your work last night.
Totally wrapped they are, and now want to learn smth like this.
First things first, and now I will have to learn smth like this

Now after 2 weeks I have finished my work and sent it to the photoservice. My nerves are all on edge. In 2 days I'll see the result.

I know how you feel. 2 days is long time when it comes to prints.
I'm still analog photographer, and even 1hr is long time
btw what size are you getting print?
Also, did the photoservice charge a disk opening fee?

oh, I ran through them tutorials you suggested, and this was heaps of fun.
Using CMYK convertion, then curves was easy, but then I tried with gradient map.
A little bit harder, but end result was heaps better. Colour charts came in useful here.
FUN

the size was 15*20 and 20*30. Matt paper. I just have to pay the shipping and 0,70$ / Photo. The local photo labs can't print this size on matt paper so I had to send it to an internet shop.

wow! poster size. Thats cool
You will have to let us know how the end result is.
I have never had a graphic manip printed out at this size, now i'm thinking I should.
insane.cagm.de you have become a great inspiration for me as I bow

back to the topic, just wondering when you coloured hair and face, did you find it better if you blurred the mask out from hair line, or blurred mask out from skin line.
I'm having some trouble at hair line, where bright orange streaks start to show when I play around with mask, trying to get edge perfect.

cheers