Hand Coloring Your Photos in Photoshop

I always loved the look of hand color photos but never learned it with print film. Then when Photoshop came onto the scene, I began to play with the idea again.

Here are the steps:

Open a photo and save in a new name. This protects the original.

In PhotoShop, use the "Desaturate" command to remove all the color. It is located under the image tab, then adjustments or use the shortcut: Shift+Ctrl+U in CS2. Another way is to convert the image to greyscale mode and then back to RGB. Either way, you now have a B&W image in a file that can take color.

Then select the history brush and begin to go over the spots that you want to re-color.

Or, open your photo, then use the sponge tool and begin to desaturate the portions that you want to be B&W.

When I first attempted this process. I opened an image, duplicated it. Desaturated the second layer. Then erased the areas I wanted colored again.

Here is an example that I did with a photo of my newphew:



Have fun with this.