Coloring with Photoshop

[down2earth2]

Any suggestions for improvement would be welcome. I was a bit stumped on the blonde hair which I ended up painting a shade of yellow on a seperate layer then decreasing the opacity until it looked about right. Somehow it looks like the color of the wallpaper to me.

I'm curious how long it would take an experienced colorizer to colorize a photo like this. This was my second attempt at colorizing and it took me about 4 hours. It was faded, but had no scratches to deal with. I would like to think I could get much quicker.

[Silky]

I don't use Photoshop to colorize (yet)...but I use Paintshop Pro 7. This is a really good effort. My one criticism is that the skintones are a bit lifeless. In my opinion, in a photo that contains people, the skintones make or break the image. If your skintones are dull and lifeless, the image looks dull and lifeless. If you end up with warm skintones, then the whole image takes on a different feel. Your skintones need a bit of peachtone to change them to a warmer feel. About the blonde hair...instead of thinking "yellow" when you think blonde, think "removing blue". The best blonde hair can be achieved using a low opacity yellow and red...with just a hint of blue. I copied your photo and did a quickie job of colorizing. Don't look at the details, because there are a lot of masking boo-boo's. I just wanted to show you what you can achieve in about 10 minutes if you want to. I don't know if you've tried the colorizing tutorial we have in our Tutorials Section...but if you haven't I think you'd see how easy colorizing can be if you use it. It may seem a bit complicated at first...but in reality it's quite simple. Here's what I came up with using 10 minutes and some down and dirty colorizing....

[burndog]

listen to Silky d2e2, she is our queen of colorization. Many people use different methods when it comes to colorizing. My method is no where near as quick as Silkenfairy's method, so it would likely have taken me about 45 minutes to an hour. Don't worry, your time will get quicker with practise, as you will not have to think about what to do next, with just a glance it will be automatic.

All in all your image looks pretty good, but I do agree that the skin tones and hair are lacking vibrancy (is that a word)

Anyhow keep up the good work, soon you will be giving Silky a run for her money.

[down2earth2]

Think less blue... I went to the colorizing tutorial, and had mixed success. I ended up with good skin tones, but I had no control over the other colors. I wanted to make my brothers outfit brown because my mother always dressed my brother in browns and me in blues, maybe because of the color of our eyes. I could not get a dark brown. I couldn't get the blue I wanted for the chair. I just couldn't control the colors. I don't really understand RGB. I should play with the color balance adjustment more and figure it out. The color picker seems more straightforward for me for now. I know your system must work pretty well because your colorizations are always terrific.

Thanks for your help.