Colorization Tips

Follow our colorization tips to start to be an expert in photo colorizing. These tips will help you learn how to add color to your black and white images, replace colors in color photos, and how to optimize your work using AKVIS Coloriage AI.

• When selecting a color take into account that the final result depends on the brightness of the original color.

  If you are not satisfied with the result you can make the final color lighter or darker. For this purpose, change the brightness range of the selected color. Take into account that the brightness range compression (especially if it is strong) will inevitably result in deterioration of the detail and deepness of an image.

   

• Colorization will look natural if you select less saturated colors for your black and white photo.

   

• To get a smooth color transition (i.e., when assigning several colors for the sky or for verdure), draw strokes far from each other; if you want to have a sharp color transition (i.e. when assigning colors for eyes, lips, etc.), draw strokes close to each other so that the colors won't flow.

   

• To remove strokes, use the Eraser tool . The shortcut for the tool is the E key.

  If you want to remove an entire stroke, press the Alt key (Mac: Option) and click this stroke.
  To remove all strokes, press the keys Alt+Ctrl (Mac: Option+⌘) and click the picture.

   

• To recolor a drawn stroke (or change its brightness range), select a new color (or brightness range), activate the Tube tool , and click the stroke.
  If you want to recolor several strokes having one color, enable the Magic Tube and click one of such strokes - all the strokes of this color will be recolored.
  To recolor all strokes having the same color regardless of the brightness range, use the Magic Tube with the Ctrl-key pressed on the keyboard (⌘ on Mac).

   

• To draw a straight line, activate the Pencil tool, press the Shift key and left-click the start point of the line and on the finish point. In this way you can draw a polygonal outline.

   

• To color complex patterns and objects with clear boundaries, use the Multicolor tool. This saves time, because of instead of drawing many strokes, you can draw just one, which changes color according to the initial color field over which it passes.

   

• Save the strokes! To be on the safe side, we recommend you to always save the strokes that you draw into a separate file.

  It is helpful if you have to interrupt your work before you set colors for every object or if you want to edit the colorized photo in the future (change the color scheme, edit strokes).
  To save the strokes, press the button , to load strokes press . See an example of using the strokes file.

   

• Use hotkeys for quick access to the tools: Pencil - the B key, Eraser - the E key, Eyedropper - the I-key, Tube - the G key.

   

• To regulate the brush size for the Pencil , Keep Color Pencil , Eraser , Recolor Brush , Tuning Brush , and History Brush , use the drop-out scale that appears when you press the button of the corresponding tool.
  Use hotkeys: to reduce the brush size press the key [, to increase the brush size press the key ].

   

• To change the image scale use the Navigator or the following hotkeys: + and Ctrl++ (⌘++ in Mac) to increase the scale, - and Ctrl+- (⌘+- in Mac) to reduce the scale.

   

• If you want to cancel the last action with the button Undo or using Ctrl+Z (Mac: ⌘+Z).
  Restore the changes with the button Redo . The hotkeys are Ctrl+Y (Mac: ⌘+Y).

   

• Pick colors from the other photo using the Sample Image tab.

   

• Use the Preprocessing parameters for preliminary processing of the original photo. You can adjust the brightness and contrast of the image and convert it into grayscale.

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