How to Bring Color to Your Grayscale Photos with Photoshop

I've worked with Photoshop and its effects on a regular basis for over eight years, quickly becoming the "go-to" expert for friends and family with photo retouching, enhancement, or other graphics needs. Over the years I've used a great deal of different Photoshop effects for different purposes, and have found ways to make utilizing the effects easier and more enjoyable for both the average and the advanced Photoshop user.

One really popular effect in Photoshop is to add color to a grayscale photo. Don't mistake this for the effect of taking color from a photo and just putting elements back; that's something different entirely. This article focuses on applying color to a picture that was gray to start with. This effect works well in making certain family photos or other scenes more dramatic.

While the steps to colorizing a grayscale picture are fairly simple, the biggest problem people face with the process is accidentally removing the detail by the time they're done. The truth is it's actually quite possible to add color and keep the detail in any of your photos.

(Disclaimer: I've had people ask me complex questions about getting into the professional photography business. While I have friends in the profession and know that Photoshop is a necessary tool for the modern photographer, I'm not in the business, so I can't answer related questions; I just have a knack for retouching the photos of friends and family and am familiar with the workings of the program.)

First step is to ensure you're working on the photo in color, not grayscale, mode. It sounds like a silly thing to say, but if you forget this step you're going to hit a brick wall pretty fast. Click on Image/Mode and have the document set on RGB (unless you plan to print the photo professionally, in which case you choose CMYK.)

Next, make a new layer by pressing "New Layer" on the Layers Palette. Now your work will be on a separate canvas, so your original photo won't be touched (yet.). The blending mode on your layer should be at "Overlay", to let the photo's detail peek through rather than having the paint color be opaque.