Since I’m starting off with fairly small section in my photo (the face) I filled my entire layer mask with black, then began to paint over the face with white, which slowly revealed the skin color. If a layer mask is filled with black, NONE of the layer will be visible. If you fill a layer mask with the color white, the entire layer it’s linked to will be visible. The colors white and black have special meaning to layer masks. Instead, they appear next to an existing layer in the layers palette and tell GIMP which areas of that layer to show. To do that, go to “Layer” in your menu bar, click on “Mask,” then choose “Add Layer Mask.” Create layer masks to avoid over-coloringĪs you can see, the entire photo is colorized at this point-so you’ll need to make this layer affect only the section that you want. Once you’ve made all the new layers your image requires, change each layer mode to “Multiply.” Pick the layer you’d like to start with and make the rest invisible by clicking on the eyeball next to each layer.īecause your layer mode is set to “Multiply” the photo below should show through. I also named my layers “Hat,” “Jacket,” and “Skin” to keep things organized. I chose yellow for the cowboy hat, blue for the jacket, and tan for the skin. It’s a good idea to choose the colors you’ll be using for each section of your photo as you create your layers. I will need a separate layer for each.Ĭount up the sections of your own photo that you’d like to color, and create new layers for each one. The photo I’m using has 5 distinct areas that I’ll be coloring: the background, the face, the hair, the hat and the jacket. Create new layers of color for every section Try to find an image with a full range of grays. If a photo has too much contrast, it may not be suitable for colorizing. This will save the original image in case you need to start over. Small sections of an image can be hand-tinted too, it just takes more time and care.Īs soon as you open your image in GIMP, save it as a new file (Shift+Ctrl+S) using the. The image I found from the Internet is not copyrighted and is perfect for colorizing since it has large, distinct areas to color.
Find a black and white (or grayscale) image
#Black and white photo with one color how to#
Today we’re going to do something similar-follow along to learn how to digitally color a black and white photo in GIMP. In my last GIMP tutorial I showed you how to make a sepia-tone photo from a color photo. By Margot Dinardi in Art Tutorials > GIMP Help