Project Portfolio: Colourise and fix a photo

Colourising photographs successfully is an art, and repairing them is too! Pauline had previous asked another photographer to have a go at fixing the image.

Image description: screenshot of an initial coloured image of a horse jumping a gate with its jockey in a red riding coat.

The Process

I always want to go back to the source material to get an image to the highest quality it can be. This was a challenge as its not scanned in, instead Pauline provided a photo of the original photograph. This comes with its own challenges such as lens and perspective distortion to correct before we even start on the images itself.

Image description: the original image Pauline provided of the source photograph. The image has damage from handling and/or water as well as significant fading around the outside edges.

Firstly, let's crop and straighten the image, using warping and free transform to fix the base image.

Image description: The image once the perspective distortion had been fixed and extraneous details removed. The base image is sepia toned with obvious fading.

Then, it's a matter of separating out the individual components of the image. Duplicating each element into its own layer ready for applying colouring layers by hand using the brush tools available. While HSL adjustment layers can apply a flat colour shift, the hands-on approach will give a more natural finish.

Image description: The coloured and repaired image with a replaced sky, toned grass and coloured posts. 

Once the colour was applied, I then focused on the damage before retouching more manually to make the colouring more natural. While no image is ever perfectly finished, a little toning goes a long way.