How to Colorize a Black and White Photo in Photoshop and GIMP: Neural Filter and Manual Coloring

There are two ways to colorize a black and white photo in Photoshop. The fast one is the Colorize filter from the Neural Filters set, which places the colors on its own. The precise one is manual colorization, where every color lives on its own layer in the Color blend mode and is revealed with a brush on a mask. The first way gives you a draft, the second gives you a result you won't be embarrassed to show the family.

Below are both routes step by step, a short separate version for GIMP, and an honest talk about when none of this is needed and it is easier to hand the picture to an automatic tool and fix only its misses by hand.

How to turn a black and white photo into color in Photoshop: two routes

Both routes start the same way: you have a scan or a re-shot copy of the print, open in Photoshop. Then the road forks. The neural filter guesses the colors itself: it has seen a lot of photographs and knows that grass is usually green, the sky is blue and a face is warm. Manual colorization guesses nothing: you choose the color, and you decide where it ends.

In practice the two routes don't compete, they complement each other. The filter is a good base for a landscape, a street scene or a group shot with lots of small objects. Manual work is needed where the color is known and matters: grandma's eyes, the color of a dress, a uniform, a flag, grandpa's car. The machine doesn't know those colors and cannot know them, they are simply not on the film.

What to do with the photo before colorizing

First check the color mode. A scan of a black and white print is often saved as grayscale, and in a file like that color has nowhere to appear. Adobe's help advises opening Image > Mode and making sure RGB Color is selected, not Grayscale. If it says Grayscale, switch to RGB: the picture will look exactly the same, but it will start accepting color.

Then remove the damage. Scratches, creases, stains and dust are better covered before colorizing: fixing them on top of color is harder, and a neural network happily paints a crack as a separate object. We covered the technique in the article on how to remove scratches and creases from an old photo.

Third: tone and contrast. A faded, too dark or blown-out picture colorizes worse, both by hand and automatically. Adobe's help says plainly that on such images the colors are guessed less accurately, and suggests raising brightness and contrast first with a Curves adjustment or in Camera Raw. The goal is simple: both the highlights and the shadows on the face should be readable, black should be black and white should be white.

And last: save the source as a separate file and work on a copy. A colorization consists of dozens of layers, and the chance to go back to a clean original will come in handy more than once.

Where to find the Colorize neural filter in Photoshop

The filter lives under Filter > Neural Filters. A panel opens, and the list sits on the All filters tab. The one you need is called Colorize. Don't let the name confuse you with the Colorize checkbox in the Hue/Saturation adjustment: the neural filter is a real automatic colorization of a black and white picture, not a single-hue tint like sepia.

Before the first use the filter has to be downloaded: there is a cloud icon next to it, and a click loads the model onto your computer. You need an internet connection for the download. After that the order is this:

1. Turn the filter on with the toggle next to its name.
2. Wait until a color version appears in the preview window.
3. Move the color balance sliders in the filter panel if the picture has drifted toward cold or toward yellow.
4. In the Output drop-down choose where to put the result and click OK.

If the menu item isn't there, you have an old version of the program that predates neural filters. If the filter is in the list but won't switch on, it hasn't been downloaded: check your connection and click the cloud again. A powerful graphics card is not required: according to Adobe's help each filter tries the graphics processor first and, if there is no suitable one, computes on the CPU.

How to correct the neural filter's colors with focal points

You can overrule the automatic color choice. Under the preview window in the filter panel there is a color swatch: click it, pick the shade you want, and then click the spot on the preview where the color needs replacing. A pin, called a focal point, appears there, and the chosen color fills the area connected to it.

You can select a pin and change its color, or drag it somewhere else. If you hold Alt (Option on a Mac) and drag an existing point, it gets duplicated: handy when the same color is needed on two sleeves or on several army tunics in a row.

The pins have a limit. The filter decides the border of the area itself, and in tricky places the color of a dress can leak onto a hand or onto the wall behind. The more pins there are, the harder they are to manage. So two or three points on large objects is reasonable, while trying to color everything down to the last button with pins usually ends with a move to layers and a brush.

Which output option to choose for the filter result

Send the result to a new layer, not on top of the original. In Adobe's current help the Output menu lists four options: New layer, New layer masked, Smart filter and New document. In the description of the filter itself, written for earlier versions, the list is different: Current layer, Duplicate layer, Duplicate layer masked, New layer, Smart filter. What exactly you see depends on your version.

Output to the current layer, if you have that option, is the worst choice: the original black and white layer gets overwritten, and the only way back is Undo. Take a new layer or a duplicate layer: the original stays untouched underneath and the color version lies on top, where you can weaken it with opacity, hide it with a mask in places or use it as a base for manual finishing.

A smart filter is useful if you want to return to the panel later and move the pins. The price of that convenience: the file gets heavier.

Where the neural filter gets colorization wrong

The mistakes of automatic colorization are typical, and it helps to know them in advance so you don't look for the cause in your own hands:

• Gray patches. Where the filter didn't understand what it was looking at, it leaves the area almost colorless. Most often that is hands, the neck, distant faces in a group, objects on a table.
• Color bleed. Green from a bush lands on a shoulder, the blue of the sky on a white headscarf, the skin tone on a light wall nearby.
• Averaged colors. Clothes come out gray-blue or brownish, because that is the safest option. The filter will not invent a bright red scarf.
• Identical skin. Every face gets the same tone, with no blush and no difference between people.
• No knowledge of facts. The color of eyes, hair, a uniform or the wallpaper in the room comes not from the picture but from probability. Whether it matched or not, the filter doesn't know.

This is not a flaw of Photoshop in particular: any automatic colorization behaves this way, online tools included. The brightness in a black and white picture survived and the color did not, and it can be brought back only by a guess or by knowledge. The machine supplies the guess, the knowledge belongs only to you and your relatives.

Photoshop filter, manual colorization or an automatic tool: which to choose

The choice depends on what you want to get and how much time you are ready to spend.

For a single family portrait that will go into a frame, manual work or an automatic base with finishing makes sense. For an album of fifty pictures, colorizing every frame by hand turns into a project that lasts months, and there the automatic route is wiser, with three or four key photographs finished by hand.

How manual colorization works: a color layer over the black and white photo

Manual colorization in Photoshop rests on one property of a blend mode. Adobe's help describes it like this: the mode takes the luminance of the image below and the hue and saturation of the layer above, preserves the gray levels and is useful for coloring monochrome images. In the blend mode menu it is simply called Color. Look for it in the last group of the list, where Hue, Saturation and Luminosity sit next to it, and don't pick Hue by mistake: it looks similar at first glance but behaves differently.

What this means in practice: you put a layer above the photograph, filled with, say, a skin tone, and switch it to this mode. The drawing of the face, the shadows, the wrinkles and the highlights stay from the original, the layer adds only the tint. Nothing is covered or smeared over, so the colorized photo keeps all the sharpness of the source.

The main rule follows from this: one color, one layer. Skin separately, lips separately, hair separately, the dress separately. That way any color can be shifted, weakened or replaced without touching the others. If you are not yet on easy terms with layers, start with the article on layers in Photoshop, where the whole mechanism is explained.

How to create a layer for one color

The most convenient approach is not to paint with a brush on an empty layer but to use a fill layer with a mask. The color of such a layer is changed with a double-click, with no repainting. The order is this:

1. In the Layer menu choose New Fill Layer and then Solid Color. The Create new fill or adjustment layer button at the bottom of the Layers panel does the same thing: its list opens with the same three fills, Solid Color, Gradient and Pattern.
2. Pick an approximate shade in the Color Picker. Precision isn't needed now, you will correct it later.
3. In the blend mode list on the Layers panel set the mode to Color. The whole picture will be tinted in one tone.
4. Hide the color under a black mask. A fill layer has a mask by default and it is white: click its thumbnail and invert it with Ctrl+I (Cmd+I on a Mac), and the mask turns black. If there is no mask, create it black right away: the Add layer mask button with the Alt key held down (Option on a Mac), or Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All.
5. Take the Brush tool, white color, soft edges, and paint on the mask where the color should appear.

The logic of a mask is simple: black hides the layer, white shows it, gray shows it partly. If you went over the edge, switch the brush color to black and wipe off the excess. Mask techniques are covered in detail in the piece on the layer mask in Photoshop.

The color of a finished layer can be changed at any moment: double-click the fill layer's thumbnail on the Layers panel and the Color Picker opens again. Give the layer a clear name straight away: skin, lips, dress. In an hour there will be twenty layers in the panel, and nameless ones like Color Fill 14 will turn every correction into a guessing game.

How to colorize skin in a black and white photo

Skin is colored first: everything else is later tuned to it. The base layer is a warm, not too saturated shade between beige and peach. Reveal it over the face, neck, ears and hands in one pass with a large soft brush, without trying to hit the outline exactly. You will finish the edges at the hair and the collar with a small brush.

One layer for skin is not enough, and that is the main reason for doll-like faces. Living skin is uneven: the cheeks, the tip of the nose, the ears and the knuckles are redder, the area around the eyes and a man's chin are cooler and grayer. So add two or three more layers on top of the base:

• a blush layer: pinkish red, very faint, on the cheeks, nose, ears and chin;
• a cool zone layer: a muted gray-olive or bluish tone, barely noticeable, under the eyes and on shaved areas;
• if needed, a layer for a tan or for darker skin on the hands, when in the picture it clearly differs from the face.

Work with a brush at low opacity and build the color up in several passes. The Opacity setting in the brush options bar sets the density limit of a stroke, Flow sets the speed at which color accumulates. At low values the transitions come out smooth on their own.

The check is simple: switch the visibility of the skin layers off and on again. If the face went from gray to flat orange, the saturation is too high. Correctly colored skin looks calm, almost pale, when you switch it back on, and that is normal.

How to colorize eyes and teeth

The iris is colored on a separate layer, with a very small brush, zoomed in. Eye color cannot be read from a black and white picture: a light iris may be gray, blue or green. If there is someone to ask, ask. If not, gray-blue is the safer choice for light eyes and brown for dark ones, with no brightness.

Leave the pupil and the dark rim of the iris as they are, they need no color. Don't touch the catchlight in the eye either, it must stay white: run a black brush over it on the mask if you painted across it by accident.

The whites of the eyes and the teeth are never pure white. If you leave them without color, next to warm skin they look gray-blue. Usually it is enough that the base skin layer slightly overlaps them at low density. If that isn't enough, make a separate layer in a very pale warm shade. It is easy to overdo it here: yellow teeth are worse than gray ones.

How to colorize lips

Lips are a separate layer with a color slightly redder and darker than the skin. The beginner's mistake is to take pure red. Natural lips are closer to a muted pinkish brown, and on men and children they hardly differ from the skin in saturation.

Don't trace the lip outline hard. Go over the middle with a soft brush and let the color fade toward the edges: that way the border with the skin looks alive. Leave the corners of the mouth and the line where the lips meet darker and more neutral.

Lipstick exists, and in pictures from the last century too. If the lips in the original are clearly darker and have a crisp edge, the woman was most likely wearing makeup, and the color can be made denser. But which lipstick it was, the photo won't tell you: that is again a question for those who remember.

How to colorize hair and eyebrows

Hair is easier to color than it seems, because the pattern of the strands is already there in the black and white layer. All you need is an overall shade: warm brown for brown hair, yellowish beige for fair and blond hair, an almost neutral tone with a slight lean toward brown or blue for black hair. Gray hair doesn't need coloring: leave it gray or give it a barely visible warm tone.

The difficulty is in the edges. Single hairs against the background can't be traced, so along the outline of the hairstyle work with a large soft brush at low density: the hair color will slightly spill onto the background, and that looks more natural than a hard border with a gray fringe.

Eyebrows and eyelashes take the same color as the hair, only weaker. At the hairline on the forehead leave a smooth transition: there the skin color and the hair color overlap each other.

How to colorize clothes

Every piece of clothing gets its own layer: shirt, jacket, tie, dress, headscarf. Here you can work faster and harder than on the face: the borders are crisp, and it is convenient to select the area with any selection tool first and then fill the mask with white inside the selection.

The brightness of the fabric in the picture hints at what the color could have been, but doesn't name it. A dark suit may have been black, navy or brown. A light dress: white, pale blue, yellow, pink. Leave white almost colorless, with a barely noticeable warm or cool tone. Don't paint black in a saturated color either: a dense layer on a very dark area is almost invisible, but it does give dirty edges.

Paint metal, buttons, buckles, medals and glasses on separate small layers. The small things take time, but they are exactly what separates careful work from a quick fill.

Why color won't show up on a black and white photo in Photoshop

Most often because the file is still in grayscale: in that mode color has nowhere to be stored, and any shade turns into gray. Open Image > Mode and choose RGB Color.

If the mode is right, go through the rest of the list:

• You are painting on the layer instead of the mask, or the other way round. The active thumbnail is the one with a frame around it. A mask understands only black, white and gray: a colored brush on it turns into a shade of gray and just partly reveals the layer.
• The mask is black and the brush is black too. Color is revealed by a white brush.
• The color layer ended up under the photograph. It must lie above the black and white layer.
• The area is almost white or almost black. The Color mode keeps the brightness of the original, and pure white and pure black have no room for a hue. That is not an error: it is how it should be, and it is exactly why highlights and deep shadows stay neutral.
• The brush opacity is too low. After a dozen weak strokes on the mask the color has barely appeared: raise the value or make another pass.

How to colorize the background

Paint the background last and in the calmest color. Its job is not to distract. The backdrop of an old photo studio is usually made a muted gray-brown, gray-green or gray-blue. A wall in a room, wallpaper, curtains: low-saturation colors, a tone or two quieter than the clothes.

Outdoor shots have their own anchors: sky, foliage, grass, earth, brick, wood. Their colors are known, but restraint is needed here too. The sky near the horizon is lighter and paler than overhead, foliage in shade is darker and bluer than in the sun. One even green across a whole bush gives the colorization away instantly, so on large masses put down two layers of close shades and alternate them.

It is convenient to paint the background through one big layer with a rough mask, placed in the panel below the skin and clothing layers: then their neat edges stay visible, and you won't need jeweler's precision along the outline of the figure.

Where to get colors for colorization: references

Colors are taken not from your head but from color photographs. Memory deceives: a skin tone picked from the palette by eye almost always turns out too pink or too orange. Open a color picture with similar light next to your work and compare against it.

What works as a reference:

• color photographs of the same person in later years: eye color, skin tone, hair color before it went gray;
• photographs of close relatives: skin and hair tones often run in the family;
• things that have survived: a dress, a headscarf, medals, furniture, a rug from the wall;
• what relatives tell you: "the dress was cherry red" is worth more than any guess;
• for uniforms, insignia, vehicles and shop signs: museum photographs and reference books, not impressions from the movies.

If there is no reliable source, it is more honest to choose a neutral, quiet option than to confidently paint a bright color that never existed. A colorized picture is easily taken for a document, and a mistake in the color of a uniform or medals will wander around family chats for years.

How to match skin color from a color photograph

Skin color is sampled with the eyedropper straight from a color picture. Open the reference alongside and double-click the fill layer's thumbnail so the Color Picker opens. While it is open, the cursor over the document window, as Adobe's help says, turns into the Eyedropper tool: click the image and the layer takes that color. The same page describes a trick for sampling from another window: click in the image and, without releasing the mouse button, drag the eyedropper anywhere on the desktop, and the color is taken where you let go. That way you can pick up a shade even from a photograph open in another program.

Take the sample from a zone of medium brightness: a cheek or the forehead in soft light, not a highlight and not a shadow. Highlights hold almost no color, and in shadows it is muddy. For the blush layer sample the reddest part of the cheek, for the cool zones the area under the eyes.

The reference and your picture should be similar in lighting. Skin in sunset light and skin on an overcast day give completely different samples, and carrying a sunset color over to a studio portrait will make the face ginger. After sampling, judge the result as a whole and, if needed, shift the color in the picker by hand.

Why a colorized photo looks unnatural

Almost always the cause is one of five, and all of them can be fixed without starting over.

• Too saturated. The most common trouble. The colors of an old picture should be calmer than in a modern photograph. Lower the opacity of the color layers or of the whole group.
• One color for all the skin. A face with no blush and no cool zones looks like a mask. Add the layers discussed above.
• Color in deep shadows and in highlights. In reality the darkest and the lightest areas are almost colorless. Go over them on the mask with a gray brush to weaken the tint.
• Hard edges. The color stops along a line, as in a children's coloring book. Soften the mask border with a soft brush.
• Everything at one temperature. Warm skin, warm background and warm clothes merge into brown mush. Give the background or the clothes a cool shade and the face will come alive.

A good self-check trick: shrink the image to the size of a postage stamp or step back from the monitor. The small flaws disappear and the general ones become obvious: a face that is too red, toxic green grass, a background that argues with the person.

Where gray patches and colored halos at the edges come from

A gray patch is a place the brush never reached: the gap between the skin layer and the hair layer, an ear, the space between fingers, the skin in the opening of a collar. In the overall view they are invisible, but in print they catch the eye. Go over the whole image zoomed in, moving across the screen, and close the gaps.

A halo is the opposite mistake: the color went past the border. A skin-colored fringe on a collar, a green one on a sleeve, a blue one around the head. It is removed with a black brush on the mask of the layer that spilled over. If the layers have sensible names, the culprit is found in seconds: switch layer visibility off one by one and watch which one takes the halo with it.

The third kind of defect: color landed on damage. A scratch tinted in skin tone becomes more noticeable than it was in gray.

How long manual colorization takes

The honest answer: a long time, counted in evenings. There are no exact norms here, only rough guides. The neural filter gives a draft almost at once. Manually colorizing one waist-up portrait on a plain background takes an evening for someone who handles masks with confidence. For a beginner the same portrait easily stretches to two or three evenings, and the first result will most likely beg to be redone.

The time grows not with the file size but with the number of objects. A group shot of ten people means ten faces, twenty hands and ten sets of clothes. A wedding in a courtyard, a class outside the school, a dinner party with dishes on the table: frames like these take days to colorize by hand.

The practical conclusion: doing it by hand from scratch makes sense for the one or two most precious pictures. For the rest of the archive automatic colorization is wiser, with manual fixes only where the machine spoiled something.

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How to colorize a black and white photo in GIMP

In GIMP manual colorization is built the same way as in Photoshop, only the names differ. There is no neural colorization filter in the standard install or in the GIMP manual, so here the manual route is the only one.

1. Check the image mode: Image > Mode should show RGB. If it is set to Grayscale, switch it.
2. Create a new layer above the photograph and fill it with the color you need.
3. In the Mode menu of the Layers dialog choose HSL Color or LCh Color. According to the GIMP manual, HSL Color takes the hue and saturation of the upper layer and the lightness of the lower one, which is what the Color mode does in Photoshop. LCh Color is described there as its counterpart built on different math: the result differs a little, so try both and keep the one where the face looks more natural.
4. Add a mask to the layer: Layer > Mask > Add Layer Mask, with the option Black (full transparency). The layer will become invisible.
5. Paint on the mask with a white brush where the color is needed.

From there everything follows the same scheme: a separate layer for skin, lips, hair, clothes and background, a low brush density, a check while zoomed in. GIMP 2.10 and 3.0 have no fill layers whose color changes with a double-click, so the layer color is changed by filling it again: the mask stays in place when you do.

How Colorize in GIMP differs from real colorization

The Colors menu in GIMP has an item called Colorize, and it is often mistaken for photo colorization. It is something else: by the description in the GIMP manual the tool turns a layer or selection into a grayscale image seen as if through colored glass. There are three sliders, Hue, Saturation and Lightness, and next to them a Color button for choosing the shade directly or picking it with the eyedropper. You get a single-hue picture, sepia for example.

For colorization, Colorize suits only one scenario: select an object, say a dress, and tint it inside the selection. That is faster than a layer with a mask, but the edit is irreversible: you can change the color later only by undoing or by tinting again. For serious work layers are more reliable.

A similar trap exists in Photoshop: the Hue/Saturation adjustment has a Colorize option which, according to Adobe's help, applies a single color to the entire image. That is also a one-tone tint and not a colorization, and the only thing it shares with the neural filter is the name.

How to colorize black and white photos automatically, without Photoshop

You don't always need Photoshop. If you don't have the program, if there are many pictures, if you just want to see how your great-grandfather would have looked in color, it is quicker to upload the photo to an online black and white photo colorizer and get the result with nothing to install and no layers. The same goes for cases when the photograph is on your phone and the computer is far away.

The automatic tool also has its place before manual work, as reconnaissance. You see at once how the picture takes color in general: whether there is enough contrast, whether damage gets in the way, which zones are difficult. Sometimes it becomes clear afterwards that the original should be rescanned larger or that its damage has to be dealt with first. There is a separate article on getting a good source: how to digitize old paper photos at home.

What you shouldn't expect: accurate colors. An online neural network, like the filter in Photoshop, guesses. Grass, sky, skin and wood come out plausible, the color of a dress and of the eyes comes out at random.

How the online colorizer on gdefoto works

The tool accepts one JPG, PNG or WebP file up to 25 MB. It won't take pictures that are too small, under 100 pixels on a side, or too large, over 8000 pixels on a side: very high resolution scans will have to be downsized. The photo is uploaded to the server and processed there, and the result comes back in JPG format.

Colorization has no settings: you choose a file or drag it into the tool window, and processing starts on its own, there is no separate start button. Uploading the same file again usually gives the same picture, so spending free attempts on that is a poor deal, since there are only 5 a day for all the heavy tools on the site together. If the color didn't satisfy you, it pays more to improve the source: scan it larger, re-shoot it in even light without glare, crop off the excess. Or take the result as a base and finish it by hand, as described below.

The tool does more than color. Along the way it lightly cleans the picture: removes noise, small scratches, slight blur. The side effect: fine facial features may change. Compare the face with the original while zoomed in, especially the eyes, the lip line and the nose. For important portraits, whether a picture for documents or a keepsake of a person, always check the likeness. If the face has become a stranger's, manual work is needed: take only the color from the automatic result, a trick explained below.

A useful detail: before being sent to the neural network the frame is desaturated. So a yellowed print or a sepia picture doesn't need converting to gray on purpose, the old tone won't get in the way of colorization.

Processing and the preview of the result are free, within 5 attempts a day. The preview is reduced in size and covered with a watermark: it shows how the colors landed, but it isn't fit for further work. The clean file without a watermark is paid. The tool colorizes one photograph at a time, you can't make spot color corrections in it, and running the same file again usually gives the same picture. A tip from the tool itself: crop off the borders, the mat and neighboring pictures in advance, leaving only the image. The neural network processes the whole frame, and extra margins take quality away from what matters.

Automatic colorization as a base, manual finishing on top

The most time-saving way to get a good result is not to choose between the machine and your hands but to combine them. A neural network quickly does what takes a person hours: the background, foliage, ground, furniture, the general skin tone on all the faces. The person then does what the network can't: sets the right color of the eyes, the dress, the uniform, and removes the patches.

The workflow is this:

1. Put the black and white original in order in an editor: scratches, stains, contrast. This file will remain the base, so it is better repaired by hand.
2. Get a color version: with the filter in Photoshop or in the online tool.
3. Open both files in the editor and place the color layer above the black and white one.
4. Add your own color layers on top for the zones where the machine got it wrong.
5. At the end adjust the overall saturation and tone.

It is important that both files match in size and cropping. If you cropped the borders before uploading to the online tool, crop the working file the same way, otherwise the layers won't line up.

How to take only the color from an automatic colorization

The same blend mode that powers manual colorization works here. Place the automatically colorized file as a layer over your restored black and white original and switch that layer to the Color mode. Brightness, sharpness and all the detail now come from your original, and only the tint remains from the automatic version. It is also the way to bring the likeness back: if the machine adjusted the facial features, under a layer in Color mode the face is once again the real one, from the original.

What this gives you. First, the quality of the source is preserved: the full-size scan remains the basis of the image, even if the color file is a bit softer after processing and JPG compression. Second, the color becomes controllable: layer opacity regulates the strength of the colorization, and a mask lets you remove it where the machine missed.

In GIMP the trick is the same: color layer on top, HSL Color or LCh Color mode, a mask if needed.

Keep in mind that the free preview from the online tool is reduced in size and comes with a watermark, so this kind of work needs the clean file. If its pixel dimensions differ from your scan, stretch the color layer to the size of the document: in Color mode a small loss of crispness in the color layer is invisible, the sharpness comes from the original. The Photoshop filter is handier in this respect because it puts the result straight onto a separate layer in the same document.

What to fix by hand after automatic colorization

The list is almost always the same, and it is convenient to walk through it from top to bottom:

• Likeness of the face. Compare the eyes, lips and nose with the original. If the features have drifted, keep only the color from the automatic result, as described above.
• Gray zones on the skin. Hands, neck, ears, distant faces. A skin tone layer with a mask closes them in a couple of minutes.
• Eyes. The machine usually leaves them gray-brown. If the color is known, set it on a separate layer.
• Clothes and important objects. Replace the guessed color with the real one: a layer in the right shade over the automatic one.
• Color bleed. Green on a shoulder, blue on white. Remove the tint with a black brush on the mask of the automatic layer, then give the area the correct color.
• Blush. One faint pink layer on the cheeks and nose does a lot to enliven flat automatic faces.

After the spot fixes, judge the picture as a whole. If it came out too motley or, on the contrary, limp, correct the overall saturation and tone with an adjustment layer above all the others. How to do that carefully is covered in the article on color correction in Photoshop.

How to save a colorized photo

Save two files. The first is the working one, with all the layers, in the editor's native format (PSD in Photoshop, XCF in GIMP). In a month your aunt will remember that the dress was green, not blue, and you will change the color of one layer in ten seconds instead of painting everything again.

The second is the final one, flattened, for printing and sending. For print a high-quality JPG or a TIFF will do, for messengers an ordinary JPG. Don't delete or overwrite the black and white original: a colorization is an interpretation and the original is a document, and they should be kept side by side.

Before printing, look at the picture at full zoom once more. On paper, gray gaps and colored halos are more noticeable than on a phone screen.

What neither Photoshop nor a neural network can do

No method restores the real colors. They are not in a black and white picture: the film recorded only brightness. Everything you see after colorization is either the machine's guess or your decision. A good colorization is plausible but proves nothing, and it is worth saying so to your relatives when you show them the result.

Manual colorization and the Photoshop filter don't repair damage: a blurry picture stays blurry, and scratches become more visible under color. Online colorization cleans up fine noise and scratches on its own, but tears, creases and lost pieces are beyond it, and the price of the cleanup can be slightly altered faces. For badly damaged pictures the site has a separate Restore photo tool: it repairs scratches and tears and returns a black and white frame already in color. So there is usually no point in running one picture through both tools: choose one according to the condition of the original.

And the last limitation: taste. The program puts color where you pointed, but it won't tell you that the result is too bright. Set the finished work aside for a day and look at it with fresh eyes. Usually after that you want to turn the saturation down, and that is the right instinct.

If after all this it is clear that layers and masks are not your thing, that is a result too: upload the picture to the online photo colorizer, look at the preview and check the faces against the original before showing the result to your family.

What is the fastest way to colorize a black and white photo in Photoshop? Open the Filter menu, then Neural Filters, download and switch on the Colorize filter. The colors appear automatically; in the Output menu choose a new layer so that the original stays untouched.

Which blend mode do you need for manual colorization? The one that takes brightness from the layer below and hue and saturation from the layer above. In Photoshop it is called Color and sits in the last group of the blend mode list, next to Hue, Saturation and Luminosity. In GIMP the matching modes are HSL Color and LCh Color.

Why won't color show up on my black and white photo in Photoshop? Most likely the file is saved in grayscale. Open Image, then Mode, and choose RGB Color. The second common cause: you are painting with a colored brush on a layer mask, and a mask understands only black, white and gray. And remember that on pure white and pure black areas the Color mode gives no hue.

Can you colorize a black and white photo in GIMP? Yes, by hand: a color layer above the photograph, HSL Color or LCh Color mode, a black mask and a white brush. The Colorize item in the Colors menu is not suited for this: it tints a layer or selection in a single tone, like sepia.

How long does it take to colorize one photo by hand? There are no exact norms, but as a guide: a portrait on a plain background takes an experienced person an evening and a beginner two or three. Group shots and frames with many objects take days. The neural filter or an online tool gives a draft quickly, and fixing it is much easier than painting from scratch.

Can you find out the real colors from a black and white picture? No. Only brightness survived in the picture, and a dark dress may have been blue, brown or burgundy. Real colors come only from color photographs of the same people, things that have survived and the memory of relatives. Everything else is a plausible guess.

What to do if the AI colorized the photo with gray patches? Place the color result as a layer above the black and white original, add a layer of the needed color on top in Color mode with a black mask, and with a white brush reveal the color on the missed spots: hands, neck, ears. Uploading the same file to the online tool again for this isn't worth it: there are no settings there, and the picture will come out the same. Manual finishing needs the clean file without a watermark.

Which files does the gdefoto online colorizer accept and what is paid? One JPG, PNG or WebP file up to 25 MB, with a side from 100 to 8000 pixels. The result comes back as JPG. Processing and the preview are free, up to 5 attempts a day; the preview is reduced and watermarked, the clean file is paid. The tool also lightly cleans the picture and may change fine facial features, so check the portrait against the original.