colouring old photos

[floribel]

am compiling together 3 70 yr old photos of 3 people.-- 2 are good studio hand tinted portraits but 1 is an old bl-W print with very poor focus and grainy.. after some work, I can make a reasonable job of it using low opacity flood fill for the complexion colour but this decreases the resolution and sharpening it then gives an unnatural appearance compared to the other 2-- Is there a better way to tint a face without oversoftening the male features-- thks

[Arzoroc]

Can you give us an example image? I can't really figure out the exact problem from your text.

[Maffe811]

I think he has a b/w he wants to color.. and he wants to know the best way to do this...

[floribel]

yes Maffe I am seeking a better way to color a poor Bl/W photo than my bucket fill method..I'd like the result to have some semblance to 2 other color photos when I combine them in a suitable frame-(family-tree effect). I can match the skin-tone colours ok but the bucket-fill blurs the image and subsequent sharpening over-accentuates some features like eyebrows. I've since found a tutorial using layers of color which I'm about to try. There are many commands in Gimp for which I don't know their practical application until I find a tutorial somewhere.thks

[Arzoroc]

Ahh okay I think I got you now


Try the following:
Make a new layer on top of your B/W image (Click on "Layer > New Layer" when you opened up your image) and set the layer mode of that layer to "Color" or "Overlay" (try around with those a bit):

(Not my image)

Now you can use the Paintbrush tool (with a fuzzy brush) to draw different colors on that layer.

(Again not my image)

By choosing the right colors you can easily create the desired effect (I assume you know how to choose different colors). If the colors are too vivid, try lowering the opacity-slider of the layer to make them a bit more transparent.


By using this method (I used an "Overlay" layer) I received this effect in around 3 minutes:

(from http://www.kottke.org/plus/misc/images/ ... ysburg.jpg)
Into this:



As I said, this was done in a few minutes, and it gets better the longer you work on it.

Good luck,

Arzo

[virtualTune]

could you upload the original picture. I cannot accses the server for some reason. or in other words, did you colour the old man or desat the bg?

Its hard to see, but did you also colour the hair?

[Arzoroc]

Hm I colored the man, the photo was b/w....

But I can't access the photo aswell .. weird. I haven't got it anymore but you should get the point I guess.

[floribel]

at last the method outlined worked for me--was doing some basic things wrongly--thks Arzoroc--Also found a suitable lesson using a layer mask which also worked but when I try using layer masks generally I usually fail with them and can't analyse why successfully or what to choose from the initial add layer mask menu--Anyway. I've now been trying unsuccessfully to make an oval transparent vignette of this now colored photo which is a different topic. thks again--

[Arzoroc]

I'm making a tut about layer masks, they're really not that hard to understand.

Basically there are 6 things to remember:
- A layer mask is a sub-layer to one of your layers
- The layer mask controls ONLY the opacity of the layer it's attached to
- The layer mask only works with grayscales (black, grey, white)
- White means 100% opaque, grey means 50% transparent and black means 100% transparent (invisible)
- By clicking on the layer mask and painting with different kinds of white/black, you can control the opacity/transparency of the layer #at the location you painted on# fairly exact without affecting other regions of the image.
- On the dropdown menu of the layer mask, white means the layer is 100% transparent and you can paint different tones of black on the layer mask to make some parts of the layer invisible. Black means that the layer gets 100% transparent (>invisible) and by painting on the layer mask with white, you can add different spots that shall be transparent.

My video will be out soon though. I hope I can explain most of the things quite well.