OK, lets take a black and white photo, and bing a little color into it's life.....

First, start with a black and white photo. If you don't have one, thats easy to fix. Open the color photo, and from the menu bar select Colors/Grayscale/ This will convert the image to black and white.

Before you go further, go to the menu bar and select Colors/Increase Color Depth/16 million and boost the color count for your image. Now your ready to begin.

Open your Layer Palette. We want to add new layers for hair, skins, eyes, lips, eyebrows, backdrop and blouse. . Make sure you change each layer from Normal to Color.

We will start with the hair. Set the color of the RGB to 123/92/25. Use a small tip brush, about size 10 with a round tip. Select the Hair Layer and color in the hair:

Now we will work on the skin. I used an RGB setting of 234/182/160 and colored in the skin part of the image:

Next, I decided to do the lips. So selecting the Lips layer and setting the RGB to 199/128/124 I colored them in:

For the eyebrows, I decided to use the same RGB setting as the hair, 123/92/25 and colored them in"

Now, select the Eye layer. For the eyes, I just selected a violet color from the standard color palette. I colored the eyes, then lowered the opacity for them to 23. I wanted just a hint of color in them.

Almost done now.... Next, I selected the backdrop layer. I again just selected a blue from the color palette and painted in the background. Then I dropped the opacity for that layer down to 23.

And finally, I selected the Blouse layer and used a light bluish color for that:

Well there you have it.....There are a number of different methods you can use to colorize a black and white photo, but this is the method I use most of the time.

One of the advantages to using layers in this fashion is it gives you the flexability to change things.

For example, if you decide you don't like the hair color, toggel off the layers visibility, add a new layer, and try a different color. It's much easier this way then to do several complete versions of the same photo.

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