COLORIZE a Black and White Photo Lightroom Tutorial Video Lecture | Adobe Lightroom CC: Photo Editing Masterclass - Design

hey everybody I'm Nathaniel Dodson from
Tuck vidcom and today we're going to
talk about how to colorize a black and
white photo in Lightroom it looks a
little something like this if you do
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you so thank you let's jump in and check
this technique tip whatever you want to
call it in Lightroom let's check it out
right now alright so here we are in
Adobe Lightroom and we're going to play
around and take this black and white
photo we're going to colorize to the
best of our ability and see how it looks
here and you know yeah we're just gonna
have a go at it here now you might be
thinking why not do this in Photoshop
and that's probably a good question but
this is more or less to just showcase
some of the ability here in Lightroom
and it is all non-destructive and it's
just kind of interesting and certainly
if you're going to be using this guy
right here the adjustment brush you're
going to learn a lot so here's what I'm
going to do I'm going to right click on
the image and I'm going to choose create
virtual copy that way I just have a
second version of this black and white
photo so if I mess anything up I don't
mess it up too badly I think what I'm
going to do first is to look at changing
the color of the sky and then we'll do
some of the landscape in the road in the
car and all that good stuff so I'm going
to select the adjustment brush by just
clicking on it enough pops the
adjustment brush and all of its settings
now I just want to make sure everything
is reset so I'm going to hold down my
alt or option key and look at that see
the the word effect it's going to change
to the word reset just hit that and it's
going to make sure everything is reset
to kind of the default it's going to
slide that down to make my thumbnail
strip a little bit narrower now all I
really want to change here is the color
so I have this color setting right here
and I can select this little thumbnail
and I'm going to go with a nice
saturated blue and if it's too much I'll
show you how we can tone it down in just
a second the other thing I want to do is
shut Auto mask off so I don't want this
to Auto mask and I can look at the size
of the brush that's probably about big
enough but you can change your size and
your feathering settings over here the
feather is just sort of the softness or
blurriness of the edge of the brush you
can also use the left and right square
bracket keys to make the brush bigger or
smaller so what I'm going to do
it's actually nice to have a tablet if
you have like a Wacom tablet or
something like that we're going to click
once to drop a little pin and once we've
dropped that pin we'll begin painting
here and the pin is just kind of the way
we can go in and select this whole bunch
of painted stuff in the future I'm going
to paint very roughly here and I know
I'm getting blue paint down here over
the edges of these rocks but I don't
mind I'm going to I'm going to show you
how we can erase that away in just a
moment so we go over the sky just like
this and just make sure we paint it all
in when you have the sky painted and you
think it looks pretty decent you could
come in and adjust and say you know what
I actually want to add a little contrast
maybe remove some contrast things like
that you do have the ability to add just
to really clean things up now I want to
zoom in on these rocks because I really
want to make sure that we can clean this
edge up right the rocks should not be
blue so we're going to clean that up
what I'm going to do is up here my
Navigator right I can open it up you
really don't have to open it up but
maybe we can get a nice overall view of
our picture there we have these options
fit fill one two one two two one but
these little arrows allow us to go like
eight to one and that's going to really
zoom us in now you can see based on this
little loop were zoomed way in on the
hood of the car what we can do is we can
click here in the navigator to move to
exactly where we want to see it maybe
actually eight to one that might be
zoomed in a little bit too close let's
go like four to one and maybe that's
even too close let's try three two one
three one is probably good we get a nice
close-up of these the edges of the rocks
now all I'm going to do here is we're
going to come back over check out our
brush and I'm going to just turn it to
the eraser so we're going to set to
erase and I'm probably going to turn
auto mask on because I'll let Lightroom
try to go ahead and detect the edges of
these rocks so what I'm going to do is
I'm going to come over here and select
with my loop I'm going to say you know
get all the way up there to the corners
you know I think three to one still
might be too big
let's go like two two one that's much
better now if we want to navigate
quickly to you can hold down the
spacebar it will convert the tool to the
hand tool and you can simply click and
drag now we need to make our erase for
us erase brush a much larger so I'm
going to use the right Brad I'm sorry
yes the right bracket key and I'm going
to tap tap tap tap times have to make it
nice and large something like that and I
want to keep you see the center point
there of my eraser brush I want to keep
that over the rocks because then
Lightroom is going to sort of use that
for its Auto masking feature and you can
see or I can just paint very quickly
over this edge and it's going to say
alright just get rid of the blue that's
on top of the rocks in fact now that I
know it's working so
well I might just put it back to fit and
make my eraser brush a little bit
smaller here and just quickly paint over
the edges and it's just going to get rid
of all the blue stuff on the rocks and
we'll be ready to move on to the next
stage of this here as soon as I get all
this stuff gone I just say get all this
stuff gone but make make all that color
stuff go away you can see we made all
the blue go away all right so let's work
on the foreground here I think sort of
this this really fast-moving tumbleweed
II looking stuff should be more of like
a beige type sandy color so I think
that's the color will make it will make
the rocks a little bit more red now one
important thing to know we were just
able to erase that blue because we had
this pin selected so it's got kind of
that dot in it because it's selected so
if we come over here to the adjustment
brush and we choose this new option now
we have the ability to create a new pin
you can see this pin is no longer
selected if we wanted to edit that pin
we could just click on it and now that
pin is select you can see EPS telling us
we got that blue color and we can go and
erase this or add to it whatever we want
but I'm going to choose new to create a
new pin and I'm going to start coloring
this tumbleweed stuff more of a beige
tan color so I'll come back over to my
color and let's go with some kind of
very light tan color and what I'll do is
make my brush maybe a little bit larger
than this Auto mask is still shut off
and we'll just come out here and start
painting and this can be pretty rough we
might want to be careful when we get
around the car in fact we could even
probably turn auto mask on when we get
closer to the car and just see how that
works for us see if it kind of prevents
our colors from getting onto the hood of
the car
Auto mask is going to be slightly
limited in this case because it is a
black and white photo but we can still
give it a shot it certainly doesn't hurt
to try so I can come through the
windshield here I probably make the
brush a little bit smaller and just try
to get some of that tumbleweed back
there and the brush tool is it can tend
to be a little slow in Lightroom because
you know Lightroom can just be kind of
slow at times but you know if you work
with it and actually you can even see
over here that it just it just sprayed
all that beige color all over the car so
we'll have to erase that no worries but
I'll just finish this out over here and
just get the rest of this kind of
tumbleweed e stuff painted nice and
beige colored now that we've done that
we're ready to come over here and clean
up and just erase around the car a one
cool trick is you can hold down the alt
or option key and will automatically
temporarily switch you to the
face the erase brush you can see how a
race is now selected I'm just holding
down the alt or option key and I can
paint the stuff away now I'm going to
shut Auto mask off for the erase because
I want the sort of freeform nature of
the brush so I can just come in here and
really make sure I get rid of every
little bit of paint there on the car I
should probably make the brush the erase
brush a little smaller so I actually
switch right to the eraser use my my
bracket key there you know I'm going to
zoom in two to one I'm going to pop over
here to the edge of the car so this make
my eraser brush a little bit larger and
just paint that stuff away so you can
really be as exacting in this stage as
you want you can take as much time or
you can sort of breeze through it as
much as you like for the sake of this
tutorial we'll really try to breeze
through it at a somewhat reasonable pace
so we're not working on this all day and
I think now that we've done that we
really need to add well let's do the red
for the rocks and we'll add more color
to the foreground committee the bushes
should be a little green and we can add
some shadowy areas and things like that
we can really kind of take it to the
next level let's go ahead and hit the
new button here to create a new
adjustment brush and let's paint the
rocks over here let's give them more of
a reddish type of color and I want to
make sure auto mask is shut off and
we'll just begin going over all this and
I'll probably speed the video up a
little bit here so I can just burn
through this really quickly and I'll be
back in just a moment with with some
nicely painted rocks and I'm back maybe
a little faster than expected
but there we go the rocks are the way
they are you might want to turn on auto
mask as you get close to the edges that
might be the best way to go but if we
hover over the pin here we're going to
get this red overlay that just kind of
shows us where we brushed and what parts
of the image are affected and that looks
pretty good it's still a bit bright so
maybe we'll even tone the whites down
out here for the rock and I think I need
to make the red a little bit more red
maybe saturate it a little bit more
something like that maybe not maybe I
need to just give it more of a saturated
orange color something like that
probably works we can see it's bleeding
up into the sky so this would be where
you take the eraser set it to auto mask
and just go ahead and paint over the sky
and just make sure you get rid of any of
that stuff that's bleeding over into the
sky it's going to keep your image from
looking like it has all kinds of crazy
haloing happening in it and just just
really clean things up nicely there we
go just like that and we will come back
we'll really touch this up in just a
second let's create another new
adjustment brush here and let's give
this kind of like a very dark rich
orange and let's just add some little
bit of color variation to some of this
sand dune II stuff the kind of some of
the you know what looked like natural
shadows here is this car is racing along
the road will add greenery or it's a
little bit of green color excuse me to
some of these shrubs hitting command or
control Z a couple times just to undo I
had a little bit of a wayward stroke
take off on me there there we go
something like that a couple bits of
orange here and then over on the side of
the road we'll just add some orange eNOS
to that as well just to kind of mix
things up a little bit add a little bit
more flavor will create another new
adjustment brush here we'll give this a
bunch of green now this might be way too
much green but the beauty of these
brushes we can always tone things down
so I'm going to make my brush a little
bit smaller here I'm going to paint in a
little bit of green you can see yeah
it's just it's way too green right so
with that pin selected you can see the
pin is selected we can just select that
color and say you know what just back
some of that saturation out of there
really make sure it is still green but
just back that saturation out a little
bit give it a little bit of green in
there and I come over here and hit some
of these areas that kind of should be
bushes and obviously you know take a
little bit more time if you're really
you know cleaning up a photo and you
really really really want to do a great
job you know you'll just spend a little
bit more time tweak it adjust it and
just make it perfect and we'll add some
green that'll kind of come through the
car windshield a little bit there
something like that's cool go add a
little bit more green here to the very
foreground just to kind of give that a
little more balance something like that
that doesn't look perfect but I think
it'll be good enough to get the job done
for us here and now that we've done this
we'll add a little bit of shadowing and
sort of rich or redder areas to the rock
foundations as well so once again create
another brush load up the color go for
like really rich orange red color
something like that we'll see what this
looks like here make my brush a little
bit bigger I'm going to add some of this
here to the four to the to the front
side of this little rock here I think
that's pretty good
and I'm just going to add this kind of
shadowy areas of these these rock
foundations just to further accentuate
them a little bit just really help build
them out a little bit more and go add
some over here add some up here to this
part of the rock face just going to you
know serve to make things look a little
bit more natural kind of like it belongs
and you know if it's just too saturated
we can select that I think it is a
little too saturated we can just grab
the little saturation slider down here
and just back it off a little bit you
know back up the saturation maybe we
could say hey look increase the contrast
to those areas a little bit maybe back
off the exposure just a tiny bit they
are after all the shadowy areas maybe
that will help introduce more of that
color and depth and and just make it
look a little bit more realistic and one
last thing we want to do to landscape is
again create another new brush and we
wanted there's going to be a little bit
of like sky reflecting off of the flat
areas of rock so let's go ahead and just
add some blue and it's going to really
clash hardcore with the red but I just
want to kind of see what happens here so
let's just paint some like what would be
blue down into the rocks over here right
you can see it really looks like super
purple as it mixes with the red that's
fine we're going to back this off we're
going to make this real subtle over here
but I think it'll be a pretty cool
somewhat realistic type of effect this
light is from the Sun so actually I
probably should undo that this over here
would have more of that just blue of the
sky reflected into the flats in these
somewhat darker areas of the rock face
and we just really need to back the
saturation off quite a bit something
like that might just add a little bit
more realism over there it's subtle but
I think it adds a little bit more
realism and it's not it's not going to
be a perfect image but you know we'll do
we can you're right let's create another
brush and let's begin coloring the road
and I think for the road we're going to
go with kind of a subtle subtle beige
type color as well and we'll just paint
over this now we do we have the white
line on the side of the road over here
this white line but the line down the
middle of the road is going to be yellow
so we'll get to that in a moment let's
just go ahead and start painting and
just see if we can get the color of the
road kind of kind of sort of where we
want it to be and it's that absolutely
does not have to be perfect again you
can always go in use the eraser and
paint away stuff that needs to be
painted away now one thing that I am
trying to keep in mind here is we'll
probably mix in some blue and
brightening here to the middle of the
road where in theory the sky would be
reflecting into the road so I'm trying
not to forget about that and just
remember that we're probably going to go
in there and do that so I'll work on
this road here I'll probably speed it up
we'll zoom in so we can get the roads
you know serpentining all the way
through all the way back there so you
know I'll just spend a couple minutes
here I'll clean this up I'll color the
road as as it needs to be colored and
we'll be right back alright so there we
pretty much have the roads
settled now the road gets significantly
more orange because it's darker back
there so I think what I'll do is I'll go
set my eraser I'll just back the flow
down to like 50% I'm going to shut off
auto mask and I'm just going to run over
that part of the road with the eraser
just to take away like 50 percent of the
effect that air the 50% of the color
that's been painted over that part of
the road just so it doesn't look like
heavily saturated and we can add yellow
to the lines here as well so we'll
create a new adjustment brush for that
so go new and we'll set this to just
like a supersaturated yellow we may have
to go in and and I don't have tone down
the whites or highlights we'll see what
this looks like I'm going to zoom in on
the lines just a little bit here and
we'll see how well or not well this
works let's go ahead and begin painting
this yellow you can see it almost looks
more like a butter yellow rather than
that super bright fluorescent yellow
that you would expect to see on the road
so let's just give this a little test
here so there's the yellow let's give
this a little test here with the
exposure if we turn the exposure down a
little bit yeah I can see if I turn the
exposure down it still isn't very it's
not high contrast high saturation enough
let's turn the contrast up so we get
with that and not really we may just
have to double this effect once we get
it all painted in so I'm going to paint
these yellow stripes in and I'll show
you how to double double up any of these
adjustment brush effects that we're
painting in here I should really show
you what I'm doing here in terms of this
erasing as well if you click once with
any brush or eraser right now I have the
eraser because I just want to erase that
yellow that's you know it's kind of
spilling out over the macadam you can
click once hold down shift and click
where you want the brush to paint to and
when you hold down shift click and then
with shift still held down click another
time it's going to create that straight
line so we can perfectly clean the edge
of this paint here and just get rid of
any little bits that are overlapping I'm
not really concerned that being a
hundred you know thousand percent
perfect here but I think that cleans it
up nicely we're not even gonna mess with
the little thin line all the way back
there even though we really should but I
really want to get on and play around
with this car but before we do that in
order to kind of double up this line one
of the things you can do is you can
right click on a pin and just choose to
duplicate that pin and it will double up
the effect you place and you'll see we
now have an even thicker yellow line but
the problem is this
exposure is really messing us up so if I
just double-click on the exposure it's
going to reset the exposure at least for
the top of our color in fact I'm going
to reset the contrast swell by
double-clicking on that so we just kind
of double up the color something a
little bit like that maybe even will
boost the exposure a little bit just to
really get a really nice yellow line the
edges aren't aren't quite perfect but
again we're really trying to burn
through this somewhat quickly so let's
move on and play with the car I want to
paint the car blue so we're going to
create a new brush here and once more
I'll come over to the color right here
we'll just choose a nice blue color
right over here maybe something like
that and I'll zoom in on the cars I'm
going to go to a one-to-one so I can
really whoops get a little bit closer to
the car it snapped me down to the corner
there and well and then it snaps to the
top corner all right here we are and
what I'll do is I'll just paint with I
don't mind if tire stay black and this
little undercarriage stays black I don't
mind if the headlights stay crystal
clear but I think I'm going to paint
some blue into the chrome because it'll
probably be reflecting the sky at least
up above and then of course the car
we're going to paint blue as well so
choose my square bracket keys to just
size down my brush a little bit and I'll
just begin painting here over the chrome
and I'll just speed through this really
quickly and we'll be back in just a
moment now this car painted nice and
blue alright now we haven't painted this
guy's skintone we didn't even really
take the time to go open around the
windshield because you know at this
point I think we get the point here that
the car supposed to be blue now we once
got to be more blue than it is and it's
a little bit too like aqua and not like
that rich you know old muscle car blue
and I think the chrome has quite a bit
too much blue being reflected into it
not to mention the bottom of the chrome
should really have more of the road
color being reflected into it so how are
we going to change that well first
things first with this pin still
selected and this is the blue on the car
still selected we're going to grab the
eraser and we're going to set the flow
to like I don't know 60 or 70 percent
and I'm going to run one pass with this
eraser over the chrome so we're just
trying to get rid of some of that blue
effect here that's on the chrome all
right now the entirety of the chrome I'm
just going to erase some of that
blueness just really lighten up that
blue affect on the chrome great and I'm
going to change the actual color so
we're going to try more of like a deep
blue something like this see if that
gives us more like what we want it looks
a little too purple I have a really
difficult times
you know seeing the difference between
blues
Purple's I'm going to go with this I'm
going to trust that that is still a blue
purple should be somewhere over there so
I'm going to roll with that whoops
whoops I didn't I didn't deselect or
fully commit my click there I'm going to
go with like that blue and then I'm just
going to close this we've got our color
and what I'm going to do is I'm going to
duplicate this pins I'm going to right
click and choose to duplicate it we
haven't done any exposure of condors any
kind of changes like that we're just
really intensifying the blue and I think
I'm going to pump the contrast here on
the last one just to really bring out
some of the richness of that blue so we
get a pretty realistic blue now that
we've done that we want to add a little
bit of like a beige reflection to the
bottom part of the chrome on the front
bumper so we're going to create a new
brush here and I'm just going to change
the color I'm gonna give it like you
know one of these days you orange colors
and we're just going to give it like a
nice spray across the front in fact I
might even tone the flow down and this
is just of this brush and I'm just going
to spray along the front bottom part of
the car right right around there that'll
just add another element of realism if
you will to this front bumper again it's
very very subtle but I think it really
kind of does the trick and then you know
you could go ahead and just touch up and
fix up you know his skin tone and make
sure you continue the blue of the car
color around the windshield and all of
that stuff we got a really nice looking
blue if you wanted to like give the the
front signals you know kind of that that
orangey egg-yolk color you could do that
as well we could add a little bit of
like a blue mixing in with the color of
the road here to give a highlight where
the road would really be reflecting some
of that sky color but if I real quick go
back and look at the black and white
image there it is and then the virtual
copy we created to get this color
version here it is as well now one of
the things that I wanted to show you
guys before we went went away or finish
this thing off is let's say we duplicate
one of these one of these pins and we
just realize you know what it's just too
strong now well one thing you can do is
hold down your alt or option key and
hover over a pin and when you do that
you'll see this like side to side arrow
that pops up you see that let's try that
again here so you see that that little
black side to side arrow well that's an
opacity arrow so we can actually drag
this over toward the left and reduce the
opacity of the adjustment brush now
we've got two of them stacked exactly on
top of one another we're just grabbing
one of them but we can reduce the
overall opacity of that effect that's
being applied that is kind of what it is
and I think the last thing we would
here just to wrap this up is click on
the adjustment brush just to close the
adjustment brush out go to the tone
curve we could apply an overall contrast
adjustment but I think what I would do
is just pump a little bit of red in to
kind of like the lower mid-tones I would
go to the green I would add a little bit
of green to the highlights something
like that and then I will probably pull
a little bit of blue yeah push a little
bit of blue I should say push a little
bit of blue into the shadows and then
pull a little bit of yellow into the
highlights and we kind of get this like
a little bit of a cross processed effect
on top of everything else just to really
help sell the color photo aspect of this
even more so I know it took some time
guys I know it you know it's a labor of
love doing this and yeah normally I will
probably do this in Photoshop but the
point is it's very possible to do it in
Lightroom as well and every single one
of those little pins that we placed in
this photo you can bring it up you can
adjust any of the properties exposure
contrast the color you can you know hold
down alt or option click on that pin and
raise or reduce the opacity of it and
just you know so much more and you can
do it if you have Lightroom if you just
want to go and play around and see about
colorizing complete black and white
photos in Adobe Lightroom and of course
you can always export it as a JPEG or
whatever you're like from Adobe
Lightroom so for colorizing black and
white photos in not Photoshop what I say
for colorizing black and white photos in
Lightroom that's it get it got it good
Nathaniel Dodson Tut vidcom I'll catch
you in the next term and before you go
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