The Best Way To Colorize Black & White Photos In Photoshop

On this video Marty Geller from Blue Lightning TV shows you how to change a black and white image and colorize it using Photoshop.

First we select our subject from the background and save it as a selection. Press control + shift I to invert the selection and click the adjustment layer icon and choose solid color. Choose a color you want for the background, if the background of your image is white choose multiple in the bled mode menu. Next you can choose the hair and change the color in the same way we saw before but with color instead of multiple in the blend mode. Do the same with the rest of the image – part by part (this is more art than exact science).

This isn’t the first time that we are looking at adding color into B&W images – we have published in the past “How to Use Photoshop to Colorize a Black and White Photo“, “h ow to add Splashes of Color in Black and White Photos in 60 Seconds using Photoshop Elements” as well as “How to Do Selective Color Manipulation in Photoshop“. You can also find many more B&W related videos on our image editing channel.

You can find many more Photoshop video tutorials on LensVid’s Photoshop section. You can also check out some of Geller’s other videos here on the site.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.