Color restoration attempt

Published by Vlasta on October 16th 2011.

My grandparents have celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary (60 years together) this year. After looking on some old photos, we decided to scan them and turn them into an electronic photo-album. And I thought: "How hard it would be to restore colors on these old photos?"

It turned to be pretty hard. I used the new RealWorld Paint (though, you can use any other RW app) and spent about 30 minutes working on one photograph. The result is not very good, the colors do not look natural, but I guess it is a bit better than the B&W original.

The scanned B&W original.

After my color restoration attempt.

If you would like recolor some of your old photos, here is how to do it:

1. Open the scanned photo and desaturate it completely (to get rid of a typical sepia color).
2. Create a new layer and set its blending mode to "Replace color" (in the panel under layer list).
3. Use the brush tool and a color of your choice to draw into this new layer. Avoid using intense colors - the colors should be almost grey with a bit of a color tint. Brightness of the color does not matter, because final brightness is taken from the B&W photo.

Recent comments

JDDellGuy contributing user on October 17th 2011

I'd say that's pretty amazing for turning a black and white picture into a color picture. Incredible!

Congratdulations to your parents as well.

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