Tutorial Tuesday (a little late:) - Adding color to B&W Photo's

One of my favorite things to use when doing maternity, wedding, and portraits is adding color to certain spots of the black and white photos. Back in the days of film, I actually handcolored (with special paints and pens) some of my fine art prints and loved the effect. Now in the digital days, it is sooooo much easier and if you mess up - just trash the layer you were working on, not the whole picture:)

Here is my Easy Peasy way to add color to a snapshot that is black and white. This will only work if the original file is in color…



First open your picture. Make a Duplicate Layer by Hitting Ctl + J

An easy way to turn pic your standard black and white, Go to LAYER – ADJUSTMENT LAYER – BLACK AND WHITE. Click OK – now you can adjust to your liking

In order to add the color I then merge down (do not flatten or you will lose your color layer) so that there are 2 layers. On the bottom should be color. On the top should be black and white.

Then Choose the eraser tool. If it is a large area, adjust the size, I used a small eraser to be more specific. You can also adjust the opacity to the amount of color to show through. I used 68% I like to make the color pop. Rub over the area that you want to be colored.

Oila! You can also use actions, or if you don’t have the black white adjustment layer, just run your action or turn to black and white your normal way. Flatten down to the top layer B&W and bottom layer Color and erase away!!


Here is my finished product (well minus some skin softening and sharpening)