Black and White to Colour - Software?

LGreene

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Hello all,

(I hope this is the most appropriate thread to post this in).

I am a bit of a novice to photography, but due to both personal interest and my new job I would like to build up my know-how.

I am currently in charge of sourcing photographs for our new company website. One photographer I am in touch with has a photograph that I love, and is perfect for our particular needs. Only problem is, he says he only has it in black and white. And we would need it in colour.

How - if at all - can I look into turning this into a colour photograph? Surely these days there is technology that can do this, when used in the right hands?

I have naturally tried searching on Google but I have come across few authorative results.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
 
The only way I'm aware of is to paint the colour into the photo. That's possible but would take skill and a fair amount of time; and might also produce results that are not totally realistic looking (depending on the complexity of the scene and the content and the skill of the artist hired to perform the job). Generally I would say it would be cheaper and quicker to reshoot or shoot something similar than it would be to recolour.
 
The only way I'm aware of is to paint the colour into the photo. That's possible but would take skill and a fair amount of time

Yup it will take a LOT of time in photoshop.


I would say it would be cheaper and quicker to reshoot or shoot something similar than it would be to recolour.

My thoughts exactly
 
Depending on how complex an image it is, it may indeed take a lot of time in Photoshop. If not terribly complex however, perhaps not. There is still the question of how realistic it will look in the end however, and that's a big question.

Will it look like an actual color photo of that scene? Probably not. More likely, it'll look like one of those old hand-painted postcards from back in the day.

I did one not too long ago just for fun, colorizing a very old photo of Joan Collins. In addition, I dropped in a new background. Again, this was just for fun and practice. I didn't time it, but I'd guess I put maybe 6 hours into it:

Joan_Collins_c_original.jpg


Joan_Collins_colorized.jpg


I sampled colors from other shots I found of her that were already in color to try to match her skin tone especially.

In the end, I think it's not bad, and it was good practice, but I don't think it actually looks real. It looks like one of those old hand-painted postcards.

Others can no doubt do better, but I think at that point we're getting into a class of artist that can darn near paint a realistic portrait of a person in Photoshop on top of a new, white canvas from scratch.

I agree with the others - re-shoot.
 
Hi,

Thanks very much. OK, I think we will have to leave it then. Cost and time expended besides, the 'old hand-painted postcard' effect is certainl not what we want. Re-shoot it is. Thanks very much for the reponse.
 

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