Mono photographs colourised in Photoshop
I started learning to colourise old photographs a few years ago when I joined one of the best Photoshop / creative sites on the internet – Worth1000.com. The standard was extremely high, many of the competiters worked in the industry for big names and were using the site for recreation. The knowledge sharing though was incredible, so I learnt a huge amount on this site and got a taste for Photoshop.
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Initially I just watched and learnt, and took notes from the discussions in the forums until I felt confident enough. Then I entered my first competition, won the top spot and got my first gold medal out of 147 other entries! After this I entered many more competitions against some of the best colourisers on the site, and many of my entries were in the top three positions, but quite a few made it into first place.
Each one takes about 15-30 hours to complete, which may include research of the era and clothing and often restoring the original before even starting. After the preliminary work is done, I create seperate masks for all the elements and then airbrush the colour using a variety of blending modes and many techniques. Every image needs a different approach. Click for full view ;-)
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Images from left to right:
Hildegard Knef (1954 film Svengali), The Wanderer by John Malcolm, Bela Lugosi, Rita Hayworth, James Cagney (1936 film Ceiling Zero),
Frank Sinatra, Gene Tierny, Hot Rod, Ava Gardner.
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All photographs from film courtesy of www.Dr.Macro.com