How to Colorize Black and White Photos with GIMP

[@mrbcstewart]

I just went from knowing almost nothing in Gimp to knowing enough to be dangerous after watching your video. Wow. And thanks for helping to bring a picture back to life of my Grandmother that I've had for over 30 years. She used to describe the colors, and now I can actually see them!

[@TheDavidfallon]

Excellent tutorial. So many helpful processes explained. The repetition really helps train the muscle memory.

[@TH-tl1mk]

If you right-click on one of the palettes in the list, there's a submenu that says "Sort Palette..." which would help sort your palette from dark to light (or some other criteria you prefer). Surely this is fast and quick way to re-arrange without you having to manually rearrange them, especially if you have lots of colours in a palette for doing B&W conversions.

[@yolamontalvan9502]

Man, you are a Guru. I thought GIMP was poor software but I see it is so powerful. I'm sold.

[@Steve040163]

Best of the best GIMP tutorials.

[@ytucharliesierra]

Bravo Michael! The topic of colourisation of old photos is currently in my center of interest because I have a few family photos that I want to process. Yours is the second technique under Gimp that I have just learned and that is very satisfying. The first technique comes from a yter who normally does everything with PS and did only one Gimp tutorial (colourisation) as a proof of concept. He wanted to show that it can be done both in PS and Gimp. It is fascinating and exciting how both workflows differ but both hold top position in quality of learning. If interested and not already known search with this spelling "colourisation". Thank You Michael for this great tuto and best greetings from Germany!

[@JulesIvanCGaray]

I'm starting to fall in love with GIMP..

[@angelluismillan]

Very interesting and high level tutorial, especially the use of palettes.

[@johannesvandemerwe]

That was great to watch. I really like how you explain and not rush like crazy. Now I am inspired to colorize some of my family photos from the first half of the last century. Thank you.

[@einnerlink]

Wow! This channel is becoming more interesting every time! Thanks dude!!!

[@mickwilson99]

Please don't apologize for "sounding like a broken record": repetition is key to yransferring skills. Thanks for an excellent walk-through.

[@cskippy2000]

watched it. Tried it. KILLED IT. Thank you!!

[@mutedsounds2k]

I like the second technique for colorizing WAY BETTER than the "palette way": it's faster and easier. I successfully used it in the past and was looking for something similar. Luckily enough, you covered both ways.

[@RiXFortuna]

Now THAT is the way to do it. Thanks a million!!

[@vis4479]

This blows my mind but yet you make it look relatively simple

[@kensrobertson]

Thanks so much for verbalizing everything so clearly. It make the process very followable!

[@amartyab4u21]

So complicated yet you made it so simple! Thankyou so much!

[@geordiemik72]

Now I know why I have never been able to manage this! There is no way I could have worked that out for myself.

[@jimmihenry]

I am impressed :).

[@nbakerify]

Mike... you're the man! Thanks for so many great tutorials.

[@maciejgrzyb4514]

Jean Simmons :) Looks great in color :)

[@bluize56]

Was the 'Map to Pallette" option added for 2.10.20? I hadn't noticed it before, but have seen similar tutorials for PSP using this method. Glad to see this added to GIMP, and thanks to Michael for showing us how. Best to you Michael - keep up the great work!

[@jacktruelove5378]

Simply amazing! This tutorial was great!

[@edgarfranco9902]

Desde venezuela, gracias por este video. lo mejor de lo mejor

[@farhatulfahim3152]

This was a really interesting tutorial..thank you

[@cedricsahaghian1605]

Thanks for an amazing tutorial!

[@indikakumarasinghe4792]

Systematic Teacher great

[@newtalentnyc]

Awesome tutorial as always! Thank you!

[@angshumangupta9523]

Thanks!! very nice

[@johnhay8710]

Excellent tutorial - very detailed - learned a lot today... thank you so much (everyday is a school day) especially during COVID 19 !!!!

[@skomek22]

Thank you, thats really helps. You are great teacher

[@marcelouenaka]

Great job

[@lfcamar]

Simply amazing, Davies, wish I knew Gimp as well as you do.

[@hyeokkim9332]

I love it video.

[@AGUNGKAYA]

Wow. Very great Sir. Thank you!

[@dongiovanni1993]

Note that the technique shown here is completely wrong! The main mistake is author’s misunderstanding how Gimp does color mapping (both palette map, and gradient map). At 15:30 author said that Gimp considers luminosity of the source pixels to match it with the luminosity of the palette’s color. It’s not the case. Actually Gimp takes the source pixel luminosity, and converts it to the palette color _index_, not the color. So if you mess color order, it puts them in that exact messed order. Another issue is using palette instead of gradient. It gives harsh color paths instead of their smooth transitions. Btw, you can create a gradient from a palette with single command in palette context menu. In addition, when you map your colors to the skin, it does it wrong because the skin doesn’t fit 0 .. 1,0 range. And color mapping takes absolute values of source pixels, This way you get cut colors in the result. So, you miss the darkest and the lightest colors at all, and the rest are in wrong places. To avoid this you have to normalize source grays of isolated skin to fit in 0 .. 1.0 brightness. So, first isolate just the skin, then normalize it (e.g. Colors / Auto / Equalize). After that you do the gradient mapping and it puts your colors in the correct order with nice transitions. Happy Gimping.

[@sherifwahba4653]

Thank you for this great advice, Don! but can you tell how to do skin isolation?

[@dongiovanni1993]

@@sherifwahba4653 I mean your image (layer) must contain nothing, but the skin. So, you can use any masking tools to isolate just the skin, and paint the rest with pitch black. It gives you after the normalization just non-black pixels affected, and black untouched. Say, if the skin is in range 0.2 - 0.6, after normalization it will be in 0.0 - 1.0 range. Black mask remains black (0.0). it seems that you loose the darkest tone, but it's easy to avoid with the map itself. Or even simpler. Just select the skin, and apply the normalization to this selection only. Gimp uses current selection for its filters. =)

[@sherifwahba4653]

@@dongiovanni1993 Thank you very much!

[@RiXFortuna]

It is NOT. Unless you create a multi color gradient, the gradient way sucks. It is better to use a pallete with several colors and/or blur it.

[@dongiovanni1993]

@@RiXFortuna of course the gradient is multi-color, and created from a palette. taken from some reference image. Using gradient just fills the gaps between palette colors, avoiding visible 'threshold' lines in color transition areas.

[@donjames5761]

i never knew gimp could be this powerful. back when i last used gimp, it barely had any features

[@thomast8284]

I have a technique to isolate the skin tones. It goes as follows: - duplicate the image where you fetch the skin tones. - select a region that contains all possible skin tones from dark to light without anything else. - crop the image to this area so you only have skin tones in your image. - change color to indexed and select the number of palette entries you want. - create a new palette and select all skin tones in ascending order. - use that palette for mapping of the b/w image as shown in your tutorial. - final step: use Gaussian blur on the color overlay layer to remove aliasing. This method has the advantage that you don't have to search all skin tones, and that you easily get them in ascending order. No need to search and sort colors!

[@sleepyhead7694]

very nice and easy ! thank you !

[@christopherbentley7289]

Thanks a whole load, Michael. The results of my latest colourisation can be found as the Site Logo photo at the new Fan Blog for Valérie Čižmárová, 'Hotlips On The Horse Tram'.

[@Jorl]

Thanks a lot for this tutorial

[@ajaypbh]

Really great video. Thanks a lot.

[@Haziesmom2023]

Thanks!

[@DaviesMediaDesign]

Thanks for supporting the channel!

[@marysmith4811]

Thank you! Amazing!

[@kerminator7549]

not what i was looking for but still got the answer to my question and only a minute in thanks m8! greyscale to rbg noted have a good one.

[@mapuiasailo8246]

will it works on old restored photo, that black and white photo was really a good quality already...hmm

[@mikewellwood1412]

Great stuff Michael, thank you. (Thought for a minute you had gone a little mad with the rouge at the end there, but of course that was before doing more of your Gimp magic to make it look realistic. :-))) ).

[@sivadmg]

On the face of it this seems like a more "mature" approach to coloring but after having tried it I find using colored filters on a grayscale medium (original pic) works just as well if not more efficiently.

[@jonathancardozo]

Incredible, thanks a lot.

[@Auriflamme]

Who'd have guessed that Patrick Bateman would be so good at GIMP? Bravo!

[@orestesdd]

In 2023, I cannot get to the link where you have the pictures of the actresses used in this tutorial as all I get is "Oops, we couldn't find this page.". Is there a way to get such pictures? Thanks. 🤔

[@wolfsangeleyes]

@orestesdd You could perhaps try googling the actress and find the same picture that way, her name is Jean Simmons.

[@billamos5125]

Jean Simmons -- excellent choice!

[@andrs_a]

awesome tutorial, thanks

[@johnh52]

OK - the unmask painting at 10:43 is not working for me.. skin tone not being unmasked. All the steps were followed to to that point. What could be wrong?

[@m_r_studio2266]

Michael please !!! Make a video on how to make DeHaze - like in Photoshop camera raw filter in GIMP. I use haze removal to enhance faded old photos.

[@drakem002]

great tutorial, thank you very much!

[@robertf3735]

Great video, how does this method pass Shutterstock approval or Getty images regarding halos or imperfections?

[@jacksepticraftgaming]

i need some help for some reason my paintbrush doeant work and i have to use the eraser to get the color to show on the picture does anyone know a fix

[@ghostghost6840]

Thank you

[@Chris_FMS_Redfield]

How do you deal with smoke and how it diffuses light? This process is making the smokescreen abruptly change the color of the object rather than making it look like smoke is in front of something colored.

[@rangerhawk]

Excuse the noob question, but is there a reason you don't just checkmark add to palette (in the color picker) when you are creating the different palettes? ***edit*** not sure if you still monitor this older video or not.

[@CesareVesdani]

Is it possible to make the face green?

[@ENG-CT4982]

i think yeah

[@650thunderbird]

👍🏻👍🏻

[@seanr2157]

Very interesting!

[@Pocket-Calculator]

I need some help. Whenever I'm colorizing images, the brightest spots always remain gray. When the image is completely done, it always has these gray spots on the photo. Any help? :(

[@nondefan1232]

Followed all your instructions to the letter except for adding rouge because my model didn't need any, but when I got to the "Color to Alpha" step, that option in the Colors menu wasn't available (grayed out). Any suggestions as to what I might do to change this? Using 2.10.14 with Windows 10. Do I need to upgrade my version of GIMP? How do I get notifications of new versions? Thanks for any and all help because, like others who commented before me, this is something I'd really like to master. It would mean a lot for old family photos.

[@RiXFortuna]

Just a guess here. Before, make sure u clicked on the layer to select it instead of its layer mask in the layers tab. U can see a rectangle around what is selected (layer or layer mask). Alternatively go to Layer-Mask- uncheck “edit layer mask” or so.

[@ashutoshtripathi9839]

nice tutorial video.

[@ArturJBCosta]

Awesome, like and Fav.

[@naveenkumarv4252]

This is the Gift :-)

[@kab9791]

Ths is really cool ...

[@doobresick]

thank you so much..

[@iitianankit8932]

Yesterday, I gimped my photo in photoshop but now I think, I should photoshop in gimp.

[@DrunkenUFOPilot]

Ah, so there's a use for some of those odd features I've never used thus far and had no idea what they were for!

[@Reinavera73]

Gracias!!!!

[@alinexus692]

Thank you

[@abhiramanne9649]

Thanks

[@episcospanky]

Jean Simmons would be amused.

[@TheErrolJayEntertainmentInc02]

Davies, what was the actress named?

[@swapnilsharma6515]

Please make a light saber effect in gimp.

[@gmoritz71last52]

Can you do another tutorial on this subject, but use an Asian or African or ( dark ) Hispanic for your black & white subject. I'm confident that the process is are mostly the same steps, but there might be some key differences.

[@llama859]

My gimp is broken lol its pissing me off i cant use it

[@riscc3411]

Muito bom.

[@CatsCantSwim]

I just started to use gimp a week ago and I'm already finding new tools to use. After watching a couple dozen DMD vid's, I'm convinced he's not really an expert. After trial and error, you can sort the palette colors by right clicking the palette name under the 'Palette' tab, and selecting 'Sort Palette" at the bottom. It didn't make any sense to me that manually sorting created a duplicate, not to mention all the tools available to do this sort of thing. Anyways, I'm catching a bunch of tools available that he is doing manually. Also, his demo's are never as good as the thumbnail example. Careful who you give money to. They might be what you think.

[@go2au]

wow...not very long ago you'd be burnt at the stake. It's truly black magic that we just witnessed!

[@johnpatrickmatthewsmusic]

Dude you go way too fast for us semi noobs. I've had to pause so many times to find what you were talking about, not all of us know all the tools and tricks. But good video so far.

[@mdzakirraja5241]

He's thinking and Bari jam rage the barisal cites Age Kabi Sufia presents creation name gains original image Kogan order good for bolk regebol

[@jayjoseph2890]

I think you should stop saying ‘another’ tutorial’. This means your presentation is incomplete. It is a distraction.

[@lalkrishnaps476]

Thanks a lot