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You know sometimes you just
don't want that photo you took to be a plain, old snapshot.
Especially if you are hanging it on the wall or putting it
online. You want to spice it up. One easy way to do this is to
colorize it.
You've seen those old photos
that are not black and white, but more like brown and white
right? That brown and white tone is called Sepia tone. In
Photoshop you can do these very easily with some of the basic
tools the software provides for you. But you don't have to have
just brown, you can have any color you want. Whether it be
brown, blue, green or purple, it's very easy to do. I'll show
you how.
First thing is you need a
photo. Any one will do, even a black and white shot. Color shots
are just fine too. Bring your photo into Photoshop and do any
cropping and adjusting you need to do to make it a perfect snap
shot. Now we are going to colorize it. The first thing to do is
to hit Image -> Adjust -> Desaturate. This will turn your color
photo into a greyscale photo. Basically just black and white.
Now hit Image -> Adjust -> Hue and Saturation. Look at the image
below.
There are three sliders to work with. One
adjusts the hue, the second adjusts the saturation and the third
adjusts the brightness. In the lower right-hand corner is a
checkbox that says Colorize. Click that now. Now you will have
an image that is based on the color of the top slider. As you
move the slider back and forth, you will see a color change
throughout the image.
The saturation slider adjusts the amount of
color that the image has. So the farther right the more color
will be applied. As you move left of the center point, you will
begin to see the image go back toward black and white or
desaturation. Saturation means simply what it says. The higher
the saturation, the more color. Think of a towel that you are
soaking with liquid color. The more color you add, the more
saturated the towel becomes.
The last slider will adjust how light or dark
your image is. The middle is fairly neutral, and as you move
left or right of that point, the lightness changes.
To demonstrate, I have taken a simple snapshot
of some ladies watching the television. I brought the image into
Photoshop and did some cropping. I also adjusted the levels to
make it more balanced. When I was satisfied, I desaturated it
and then added a nice brown Sepia tone. Take a look at the first
image.
You can see that this is just a plain, old photograph. Now take
a look at the finished product.
If you look closely, I also added some noise to
the photograph to give it more weathered and old look. I simply
hit Filter -> Noise -> Add Noise... I added a bit of Gaussian
noise and voila, I'm done. Try doing this with some of your
favorite photos and then printing them out on your laserjet. |