{"id":7187,"date":"2009-01-08T16:37:16","date_gmt":"2009-01-08T14:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/how-to-color-a-black-and-white-image-in-photoshop\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T02:25:49","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T09:25:49","slug":"how-to-color-a-black-and-white-image-in-photoshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/how-to-color-a-black-and-white-image-in-photoshop\/","title":{"rendered":"How to: color a black and white image in Photoshop"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Black and white images have their own special beauty, but some people still prefer colored ones. If you&#8217;re among them you&#8217;ll probably be interested in this simple Photoshop trick which lets you color any black and white photo. The process is long and tedious, but pretty straightforward. Plus you can fully customize each color you use, and therefore add an original final touch: a vintage photo, a fantasy image with surrealistic colors\u2026 anything goes!<\/p>\n<p><strong>1.<\/strong> Open the image you want to color and change to <strong>Quick Mask<\/strong> mode by clicking on the marked icon.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2009\/01\/black-and-white-01.jpg\" alt=\"Color a black and white image in Photoshop\" \/><\/p>\n<p><!--more--> <strong>2.<\/strong> Grab the <strong>Brush<\/strong> tool and start painting over any area you want to color. In this case, we&#8217;ll start by coloring the skin area, so we want to cover every single bit of skin that appears on the image.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2009\/01\/black-and-white-02.jpg\" alt=\"Color a black and white image in Photoshop\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>3.<\/strong> When you&#8217;re done, go back to <strong>Normal mode<\/strong> (press <strong>Q<\/strong>) and the photo will display a selection. Go to <em>Select &gt; Inverse<\/em> to make this selection fit around the areas you just painted.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2009\/01\/black-and-white-03.jpg\" alt=\"Color a black and white image in Photoshop\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>4.<\/strong> Now click on the <strong>Adjustment layer<\/strong> button in the Layers palette (the one marked in the image below) and select <em>Color Balance<\/em>. Move the sliders in Shadows, Midtones and Highlights until you find the color you&#8217;re looking for.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2009\/01\/black-and-white-04.jpg\" alt=\"Color a black and white image in Photoshop\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>5.<\/strong> Then simply keep on repeating all previous steps once again on different areas in the photo, until all the elements are colored.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2009\/01\/black-and-white-05.jpg\" alt=\"Color a black and white image in Photoshop\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>6.<\/strong> Your image is finished!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2009\/01\/black-and-white-final.png\" alt=\"Color a black and white image in Photoshop\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Black and white images have their own special beauty, but some people still prefer colored ones. If you&#8217;re among them you&#8217;ll probably be interested in this simple Photoshop trick which lets you color any black and white photo. The process is long and tedious, but pretty straightforward. Plus you can fully customize each color you &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/how-to-color-a-black-and-white-image-in-photoshop\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;How to: color a black and white image in Photoshop&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2011,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[2441],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-7187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2011"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":335742,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7187\/revisions\/335742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7187"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=7187"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=7187"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=7187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}