Colourisation (Colorization)

[Raphael]

The colourisation I did for contest #110 Tutorial Challenge: Colorization was the first time I'd tried anything like that so, since I'm not working on a contest entry just now, I thought I'd spend my lunch break trying another.

I must admit I don't do this anything like Silk's tutorial.

So please let me know if and where I'm going wrong.

[Pekconcept]

Good job Raphael, I like it, loks like an old bleached photograph, make's me think about a jeans or cigarette advertisement. I also don't like to work on colorization like in Silkenfairy'r Tutorial.

[Twistedcliffdog]

its pretty cool, only thing is that the skin and the wood seems to be exactly the same color, but thats just me.
also, i use silkenfairys tutorial on some parts of an image, and my own little way of doing it, on smaller parts and details.

[burndog]

Nice job Raphael, depending on what look you are going for would dictate whether you need to do any more. If you are just going for a general toned look I would say that you're done. This is very similar to what a person would have rec'd years ago. Just a bit of general color toning. For a more true colour effect I would add a larger variety of colour. What I mean is that if you study a true colour photo you will notice that shadow areas tend usually to be a bit colder and highight areas tend to have more saturation. Right now the shirt and pants seem pretty monochrome.

I have done a quick version to show you what I mean. I have beefed up the saturation to make the addition a bit more obvious.Also I love saturation. Basically I just (in colour mode, with a soft brush set at about 30% opacity) painted with a bright blue for highlights in the pants and shirt, and used a purple-blue on the shadow areas. The darkened room behind him I assume would be quite blue as it is in deep shade. For the wooden steps, I have tried to add some grey areas (paint with black in colour mode) to give a weathered look. Also here and there in the wood I have given a bit of tan colouring. Just my opinion and my style, but I have found that the more color you give any given solid coloured object the more real it looks...if that makes any sense. I have also given blue shadows to his socks and a bit of red to areas of the face which tend to have more blood near the surface...cheeks ears and around the eyes.

All in all, I think you have done a great job, very tasteful colours (great skin tones by the way) Hope this has been of some help. Best advice I can offer to learn colorization is to study actual photographs, paying attention to the shifting of colour, and to keep an eye on how colour can change with light being reflected from surrounding objects.

Hope this has been of some help, and if you are only just starting colorization, you should have no problems, as you are already well on your way...nice work!

Forgot to mention, the best images to colorize are images with fine grain and images that have a smooth gradation of tones. If you look at an images histogram, and see lots of lines with blank areas in between then you are in for a tough one. The image you started with is pretty contrasty. Keep in mind that colour can not be added to areas that are very dark or very light, so the best images for colorizing are images with many tones and are not too contrasty, you can always add contrast, but when details are lost through heavy contrast they do not come back.