there are a couple of different methods for adding color to a black and white photo
and you go online and search for Photoshop tutorial video
color black and white photo, you can see a bunch these tutorial videos
or tutorial documents that can show you various techniques
the one I've had the most luck with is using new layers
and painting colors over different areas of the document
and making sure that layers and soft slight mode, so that blends and we keep
the texture and the definition of whatever pain
so let's see this in action I can do
a new layer and I'll call this hair
and from here
I can start trying to paint let's say I want his hair to be brown
now watch what happens when I choose color here I can go down and try to
choose brown
and click "Ok" and then if I go to paint
while I
chose brown but it went to gray, so what's happening there
is that this original image was in gray scale mode
in Photoshop knew that so we need to change it because we're going to add
color to it now
we need to change it to RGB so we'll go up to the Image menu
go to mode and choose RGB
its gonna tell you that some of your layers
this retouch layer in particular might
there might be in effect or might affect the appearance on that
particular layer
so do you want to flatten the image be careful
if you flatten the image all those layers are going to flatten together
and that might be a good thing because I like the retouch layer above this
background layer
cause that makes it look like a better photo that's not damaged but
if I do that it's going to flatten those layers permanently and I can never go
back and fix them
if I need to, so make sure you save this
with the layers intact and then maybe open in re save as version 2
or for right now I'll choose don't flatten and just see if it works or it
doesn't
and it doesn't look like anything change in appearance so I should be okay
now you don't want to just start painting brown right here
you could do it that way but it makes a little bit harder because you can't see
the definition and where the hair
ends so without layer selected all choose
the soft light blend mode and then that's going to allow us to see that hair through
there
and now we can start painting we'll do this quick and easy
and you might wanna do a brush that has a somewhat of a soft edge
see you don't get harsh lines to work with and we'll paint that in and make the brush
smaller again using the
bracket key ( [ ) just to the right of the " P" key to your keyboard
we're going to try to get all those little areas in
and this is gonna work for all portions of this image
so now I can go ahead and do a new layer
and I'll call this one jacket
and let's say I want them to have a blue suit
so I'm going to go over here and change the suit to blue
and make my brush a lot bigger
and again I forgot to change it to soft light
no big deal changed soft light now
and I can go back through and re paint that suite
now if the colors little bit too strong which I think it absolutely is
I'm not gonna paint this whole thing but if the colors a little bit too strong
or it let's say you go off and you don't wanna paint that button blue but you did
that's why we're putting on putting on its own layer
because it's just in fact paint so we have our retouch layer second shutdown of
we have the hair layer which it looks like I need to fill in some gaps there
and then we have our suit layer so if that ever happens you can just grab the
eraser tool
and that's humongous, but we can grab the Eraser Tool
and erase that area so so if I got off his shoulder and what not
that would be an option for me, so again is this is a little bit too strong I can
click on the this layer
and change the opacity of that layer and kinda just give a tint
or a hint of color