Colorizing a black and white photograph
One of the requirements for this assignment is to colorize a black and white image. I started with a black and white photograph of the Essex Junction, Vermont station. I could not locate an electronic image of the original print so I had to scan it from a book. This also gave me the opportunity to try the technique in Eismann's book showing how to eliminate the offset moire effect.
The offset printing creates visible, and distracting, dots on the original image.
To eliminate this effect it is necessary to reduce the size of the image until the dots are no longer noticeable (about 65% in this case), then use the Image - Resize function to reduce the size of the image. Applying the Bicubic Smoother will cause the dots to move closer together, eliminating most of the distracting pattern.
Once I removed the dots, Then I added a Levels layer. I checked the Levels dialog box and moved the black and white point sliders closer to the stronger signal strengths. I used a combination of the Spot Healing Brush and Clone Stamp tools to remove the most obvious blemishes. Most of the effort was in the sky - a result of the offset moire reduction. The result can be seen here:
I added colors to the image, using the technique we reviewed in class: Start by selecting the area to be colored with the magentic lasso tool, refine that using the lasso tool in conjunction with the shift or option keys. I started with the trees. I used three shades of green to color the trees in an attempt to make them look a little more lively. I also thought there was a little too much foreground so I cropped the image to eliimate it.
With the trees completed, I colorized the track and weeds. I was pretty happy with how the weeds looked, but the track and gravel proved troublesome. I reworked it as I went along. That explains some of the differences between how it looks in this view, and in the final view. I also colorized the people. They were a challenge, but I found as long as I kept the opacity on the brush tool set down low, and didn't use vivid tones it worked fairly well. I also highlighted the people by overspraying them with a very light dusting of a light warm gray. This may not look great close up, but it adds highlights and textures when viewed at a normal height.
I continued to work my way out from the smaller details to the larger portions of the image. The next step was adding colors to the watertank and the small town buildings visible to the left and right. I found the biggest challenge was the tombstones visible in front of the undertakers office on the left. Once again, I found softer, almost pastel tones, and minor variations of the same basic color are key to creating texture. This was especially true with the sky. I made sure to draken the sky slightly towards the top of the image, and to add a soft hazy extremely light blue to the horizon. I've also been playing a little with the track colors in this image - I addded a fine line of a dark rusty color to the rails to make them stand out from the rest of the foreground.
The last step was adding the brick color the facade of the station, and to add some color to the framework on the canopy. I didn't think the canopy frame would be a solid color, but I'm fairly certain it was barn red. So I applied a misting of a dark red color, hen went back and dusted on a raw dark gray color - to create the effect of poorly painted wood. I think it worked. I'm not as thrilled with the brick walls - they can easily turn solid and look cartoonish. I want to work a little more with colorizing brick buildings. This finished view represents my best efforts thus far.
Matted Engraving
The second requirement for this assignement is to create a matted engraving. I started with this engraving of three native Americans.
I used the tutorial on the class web site to create a new background layer:
This created a lot of dithering - especially in the faces and the robe on the left.
Using the brush, clone stamp, and spot healing brush tools, I cleaned up the background areas. I paid special attention to the areas between the legs and feet.
The last step was the most time consuming. I used the color sampler tool extensively, along with the clone stamp tool to restore those areas of the faces, robes, and other details. The steps looked like this:
