Changing Black and White to Colour

[rickcon22]

Hi all,
I am new to photoshop.
Its my mums birthday coming up and wanted to surprise her by changing some of her black and white photos to colour. I've googled it and worked out the basics however wanted to know how I could select all the polka dots on the above image and turn them red without have to do each one individually.

Any help? (Hopefully the image is attached)

 

[rickcon22]

Upload didn't work, should be attached now. Does anyone have any advice?

Thanks

 

[ibclare]

I opened this in Camera Raw and made some adjustments to exposure and sharpness. There's a lot of noise in the picture, but unless you really blow it up, it should be fine.

• Then I opened it in Photoshop and as happens, wanted more contrast, so I did a levels layer adjustment.
• Then I selected the dress (somehow missed the belt area), copied it, increased the contrast even more to bring out the dots.
• Then I did a color range selection, made a layer above the dress, clipped it to the dress layer, and filled the selection with the color red. You may have to play with your color to get it right.
• Then I set the dress layer to soft light blend mode.
• Finally I put a layer mask on the color and used different opacities of the brush to remove the red by degrees from the shadows.

Maybe someone will have a simpler solution.

 

[Remote-Medic]

That's awesome Clareby, may have to look into this colouring thing. Seen it many times but haven't actually ever tried it.

 

[Paul]

Nice job, but i honestly don't think that the original had red dots i think they are white with maybe a red banner at the waist and bottom edge.

The main body of the dress probably did have small red dots.

Please note i overly sharpened on purpose.

 

[TwistyGFX]

Very nice work with this Paul, I've never seen anyone do this before. That's very unique.

 

[MotherSpider]

Great lesson. I've seen the reverse done, taking out color, never putting it back in. Thanks.

 

[Rob_IMX]

Very cool! I often play around with blending options in this way to Accentuate color.. But I've never completely recoloured a b/w image. Be sure to post the final result!