I promised my Flickr audience a tutorial for hand coloring pictures a few weeks ago. Well here it is. Hand coloring of pictures is quite fun, it’s a nice mixture of photography and painting.

What do you need ? You need a strong vision, a suitable B&W conversion, you have to decide how to color it and you need Photoshop to do the work for you. The method I lay out for you here, is a simple method. There are more sophisticated methods around, but the time/quality ratio on this one works just fine. By the way the coloring itself is the most simple part.

Firstly you need a vision how your end result will look like. I like the old master painters and we are of course quite spoiled here in the Netherlands with our Dutch masters. I used Vermeer as an inspiration for a photo taken by Céline.

Vermeer is a good example to look at. Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) is quite popular amongst photographers in general and I think it’s because of the probable use of the camera obsura (some historians think he didn’t, but I think he did). There are essentially five characteristics of Vermeer’s paintings that suggest the use of a camera obscura: perspective, tonal rendering, composition, handling of light and some peculiar effects produced uniquely by the camera obscura.

If you need some more inspiration here are some Women in Art.

Light is in every good photo and painting crucial to have an appealing end result. There are some great examples in the short video above. If you don’t have much time visiting museums for inspiration but you do have an iPhone you can also use this for $0,99.

OK, now if you’ve got your photo you have to convert it first into B&W. I did a blog on various methods here. The conversion is important, look for contrast and especially some nice highlights. Shadows are great too as long they are not (close to) black.

OK well, now you have to decide how to color it. Looking at the paintings above sure helps but also some theory on coloring. This fun short animation gives you an idea.

Here’s another example of a picture I got from Céline (she’s very generous) I painted some while ago.

Celine3.jpg

Once you have decided what to color, you use a soft(er) brush in Photoshop, pick a color, make a new layer (on top of the B&W), put that layer in the “Color” blend mode and start painting. Use a new layer on top (in the “Color’ blend mode) for every color you use. Change the opacity per layer as you see fit. Use the zoom tool to zoom in so that you can paint as accurate as possible.

Here’s the painted version, look also at the change of light compared to the orginal:

Enjoy coloring your B&W pictures. If you have any questions please use the comment boxes and keep following lights !