Colorizing Black & White Film, Part 1: People

You know those great YouTube channels that colorize really old footage from the early 1900s?

Well, Photoshop has recently added a cool feature that can do the same thing to your photos.

I haven’t shot much black and white film, but pulled some shots from the 4 rolls or so that I’ve shot over the years. For this first part, we’ll focus on people.

There are some options to fine-tune the results, and a bunch of specific “looks”, but I used the auto-adjustments for the most part. Then I applied a bit of levels/contrast and maybe some sharpening.

Here are the results!

Let’s start this off with my favorite portrait of all time….

And here it is in color. Yep, still my fav.

Here are some kids in the town of Sawarna in Java, Indonesia. Home to some of my best surf trips ever.

A few of the locals at my old home beach of Xichong in Shenzhen

Bobby (the dog), a Secret Spot fixture, just passed away. RIP…

Ah Kang is one of the OG local surfers at Xichong. He and his brothers & cousins were always out in the water charging when the waves got big.

Spencer in his man cave (under construction).

I like the way this turned out with the muted colors.

Another one of Iz in the studio…

Esteban on the roof in the good ole days of Shenzhen

Heidi in London

Graham on Power Station Beach in Lamma

Patrick and Lydia…AI can’t always get things right. This one is definitely the most surprising result, but I like it!

Daniel & Milla