Digital Focus: Colorize Your Digital Photos

Colorizing made easier, plus close-up and telephoto photo tips.

Dave Johnson

Feature: Colorizing Your Photos

When Ted Turner colorized classic black-and-white films like Miracle on 34th Street in the 1980s, not everyone was thrilled to see those old films reappear in vibrant, modern color. Don't let what happened to old Ted make you nervous, though. You can probably colorize your own photos without enduring any scathing magazine articles or angry picket lines.

Colorizing digital images--or even old black-and-white photos--is easy, though it takes a little artistic skill to do well. Some folks use colorizing techniques to see what their car or basement would look like in another color, while others want to enhance old photos they found tucked away in a family photo album. Whatever your motivation, you can add color to your photos in any full-featured image editor. As usual, I'll use Jasc's Paint Shop Pro to guide you through the basics.

Target Selection

So, you've always wanted to know what your car would look like in a nice cherry red. No problem. Take a picture of your car and load the image into Paint Shop Pro. Feel free to work with a picture of my car.

Our first task is to select just the car's body, isolating it from the rest of the image. The easiest tool for the job is the Magic Wand. It's a powerful way to quickly select part of a photo because it grabs all the adjoining pixels with similar colors. Since your car's body should be mostly the same color, you can use the Magic Wand now to select it.

Activate the Magic Wand (in the tool bar, it resembles a wand with a glowing end), then find the Tool Options dialog box. If it's not already on screen, right-click the Magic Wand and select Tool Options. Set the Tolerance value to about 20. Tolerance tells the tool to select only nearby pixels that are reasonably similar in color. Then set the Feather level to about 2 pixels; this smoothes the transition between the product and the background.

Now click somewhere on the car's painted exterior. A big chunk of the car's body should now be selected; hold down the Shift key and click on other parts of the car until you've managed to capture the entire painted exterior. Because of natural shadows, you may need to decrease the tolerance level to avoid grabbing adjoining pavement at the same time. Now, anything we do will affect only the car and not the surrounding parts of the image.

Pouring On the Paint

Now for the fun part. Click the Flood Fill tool (it looks like a paint can), bring up the Tool Options dialog box, and change the Blend Mode from Normal to Color. We said that we wanted a cherry red car, so pick that color by left-clicking in the color palette, which is located in the upper-right corner of the screen. Click on the car, and you should see the color change without losing any of the underlying car texture. In other words, you've painted the car, and the pattern of light and shadow will remain the same.

That's not all. You can vary the opacity of the paint job by lowering the Opacity control in the Flood Fill tool's Tools Options dialog box. Also, you may have noticed that this digitally colorized paint doesn't like to "stick" to very bright undercoats, like white. So if you're painting something white, you can apply an "undercoat" to the object by changing the Blend Mode to Luminance and performing a low-opacity Flood Fill first (the Luminance mode should change the white to gray, which will more easily take the color change). Then change the Flood Fill back to Color and paint it any color you like.

It Takes a Light Touch

If you want more control over where the color goes (and how much gets applied), you might want to try the Airbrush tool instead. The Airbrush--which looks, not surprisingly, like a can of spray paint--has its own opacity control that you can use to lay down paint on top of an existing photo.

Since you can't control the mode, the airbrush paints over and destroys the color and textures underneath. That's why you need to be very, very careful when you use it. Set the opacity to 1 percent and start spraying. The longer you spray, the more paint that will build up, so develop a light, fluid touch. With practice, you can add realistic touch-ups to your photos and no one will ever know those colors weren't really there to begin with.

Dave's Favorites: Cloud Dome

A few weeks ago I wrote about techniques for photographing small objects against a white foam board. Lots of readers had asked how to do that sort of thing for their Web sites and EBay auctions. Well, wouldn't you know it--right after I wrote that newsletter, I discovered a great tool for taking great close-ups with a digital camera. Because of its cost, it's not for everyone, although nonprofessionals that do a lot of this kind of work are likely to find it an invaluable tool.

The $225 Cloud Dome may look like an upside-down salad bowl with a hole in the top, but it's actually a cleverly designed portable macro-photography studio. The dome is translucent, so it diffuses the available light in a very professional way around any object you stick inside. Just mount your digital camera on top (it comes with an adjustable bracket that securely attaches your camera to the dome) and take the shot. The dome doubles as a sort of tripod, keeping your camera steady while you take the shot.

You can add "extension collars" to the dome, allowing you to shoot larger objects and to photograph from an angle other than straight down. I've already taken a few dozen photos with the dome, and the results are excellent.

Q&A: Picking a Digital Telephoto Camera

I am struggling to make a decision between the Sony DSC-P5 and Olympus D-40. Their specs appear the same to me, though I am confused by the focal range of each camera. I like to shoot a lot of telephoto type shots and don't know which has the longest lens. Can you help?

--Mike Pons, Sacramento, California

I agree, Mike: Both of those are excellent cameras, made by two of my favorite digital camera companies. But which has the better focal length for telephoto photography?

It turns out that it's the Sony--by a nose. The DSC-P5 has a focal length, in equivalent 35mm numbers, of 39mm to 117mm. The Olympus D-40 offers 35mm to 98mm. The Sony wins, but by so little I wouldn't make that my sole criteria for choosing the camera. Be sure the Olympus doesn't have a must-have feature that will, in the long run, make you happier.

Like most digital cameras, both of these top out in the moderate telephoto range, about what you'd use to shoot a portrait from a dozen feet away. Neither camera has the sheer grabbing power you'd need for a sporting event or distant wildlife encounter. On the other hand, you can always get a 2X telephoto adapter from a company like Tiffen to improve your reach.

Hot Pic of the Week

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $10 and $100.

A gentle reminder, folks: We disqualify some really wonderful pictures every week because the submissions don't follow the rules. Be sure to include everything we ask for in your e-mail message, including a description of your picture and your complete contact information, or your entry is wasted!

Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering please read the full description of the contest rules and regs.

This week's Hot Pic: "White Deer," by Ken Runyan, Willits, California

Ken writes: "I took this picture using a Sony FD88, and I used iPhoto Express to remove a small barbed wire fence in the foreground. I photographed these deer in their usual feeding frenzy; they've lived here since the 1940s and can be seen almost daily during certain times of year."

We want your feedback! Send your comments, questions, and suggestions about the newsletter itself to comments@bydavejohnson.com. If you have a question that you'd like to see answered in the weekly Q&A, send it to question@bydavejohnson.com.

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