Vanessa Pike Russell Photography

Tutorials

Vanessa Pike-Russell : Tutorials

Handpainting a black and white photo with Adobe Photoshop CS3

As a member of Fix My Pic group on Flickr I like to turn my hand to using Photoshop (and other programs) to 'fix' or alter the photo of someone who has submitted their photo to be 'fixed' .

This week I came across a black and white photo and the brief from the photographer was:

I know it seems silly to ask to have this one fixed if its in black and white, but i thought maybe someone could come up with a killer idea?

Here's the photo to be fixed:

"checking in" by Today4u [?]

and here is my fix:

"Today4u notmypic fixmypic photoshopped" by vanessapr [?]

And here is how I did it.

Black and white photo by Today4u hand painted in photoshop using paths, layer adjustment>fill and smart filters. In this screen capture I have already coloured the jeans and hair and just finished the outline of the shirt with the path tool ready to be painted in.

First - I opened the file in Adobe Photoshop CS3 and clicked on the Pen tool. and clicked along the line of the leg and the jeans area. I moved the anchor points where needed.

Screen 1: In this screen capture I am in the process of using the pen tool to set anchor points to outline where the colour from the jeans will go. Once I have finished creating a path of the area I will convert it into a layer and fill it with a colour and set that layer to a low opacity so that the details from the black and white image will show through.

The jeans are now blue and I have selected the hair

Screen2: In this screen capture I have already coloured the jeans and in the process of colouring the hair using selections based on paths and filled with a colour with the layer on low opacity.