Technique 35: Coloring and Tinting Black and White Photographs
Tinting photographs
Brushing in color using history
Creating duotones
Ever since photography was created, folks have been painting or tinting black and white photographs to make them look like they were in color or to emphasize particular elements. With Photoshop, you can tint black and white photographs to add color or make color photographs look like tinted black and whites. Any way you want it, you can do it.
This technique focuses on how to add color to black and white (or grayscale as they are called in Photoshop) images. You find out how to layer color on top of a grayscale photo, apply overall tints using photo filters and the Hue/Saturation command, and paint in color using the History palette. Then, you explore the world of duotones, tritones, and quadtones, which mix two, three, or four colors to create the necessary range of tones — shadows, midtones, and highlights — for your image while creating a special look.
Because these pages are printed in black and white, I can’t show these tinting and painting techniques here. However, look at Color Plate 35-1. Color Plate 35-1 shows several of the coloring techniques that I describe here.
Figure 35-1: This photograph was originally in color. Here it’s reproduced as a grayscale image.