Hand coloring a black and white photograph  

Do you have old black and white photographs that you would like to color? Well you no longer have to undergo the torture of tediously hand coloring them anymore. You can use Photoshop to do the job for you. Follow below step by step instructions for more details:

This tutorial aims to show you just how this can be done. As the first step you need to select a black and white photograph and load it on to Photoshop. You can scan it or get it from a digital camera. The photograph we have selected is the one shown in figure 1. It is a pretty complicated picture.

Note that the colored version of the same picture is also placed along side the black and white one for later use in this tutorial. Just look at the picture shown in figure 2.

1) Make sure your image is set in RGB color mode. Go to Image>>Mode>>RGB Color as shown in figure 3.

2) We shall now separate the component parts of the image into layers to facilitate the coloring process. Layers are like sheets stacked one on top of the other and are very useful when you want to split up an image into component parts. Now click on the Layer menu and select “Create New Layer” or use the New layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette or press Shift+Ctrl+N to create the new layer.