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Project #19 - Hand Tinting/Colouring

Variation #2 - Using Variations Command

For as long as traditional photography has been around there has been a technique known as hand tinting. What this meant was that if a photographer wanted to add color or replace a color on a photograph they would need to get out a small paintbrush and a set of specialised paints. The job was sometimes painstaking and labourious, and, if a mistake was made more times than not the project was ruined.

In the age of the "Digital Darkroom" this same technique can be applied by using art packages like Adobe Photoshop, Paintshop Pro etc. Within Photoshop itself, there are at least three different ways to add color to a black and white image by applying color Variations, Hue & Saturation, or by using the Layers palette blend modes.

As you can see above, there are numerous ways to Hand Tint your photographs. The previous tutorial showed you how to hand tint black and white photographs using the Hue & Saturation command. This time you will use the Variations command.

If you do not have a black and white image at hand, use a colour image with all color drained from it - do this my using the Desaturate command from the Image... Adjust menu.

Remember there is always more than one way to accomplish something within Photoshop - try different techniques and see what results you come up with.

[Variation Windows]

  1. If you scanned an image that is in black and white, make sure you are in RGB color mode.
  2. Make your selection around the area you want to colour using your preferred method.

  3. From the Image menu select Adjust and then Variations. A large box with several windows will appear. At the top of the box there are two windows showing you the original image, and what you have changed so far.
  4. The seven windows beneath allow you to add certain colors. Say you wanted to add some green, simply click once with your left mouse button on the picture with called green. If you want some more, click again.
  5. If you wanted to add some yellow to the green, click on the yellow square. Over on the right hand side of the Variations box you have the options to make your colours lighter or darker. Again this is done by a mouse click.
  6. For my example here, I clicked on the green window a couple of times, and then Darker window twice so achieve the colour I wanted. Now that you have your selection give the car a colour of your choosing. Experiment with the different colours.

    [Variation Windows #2]
  7. When you are happy with the color, click on the OK button to accept the changes.
  8. All that remains now is to color the rest of the car. Just follow the above process until you have a color photograph.

 
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