How to Colorize Black and White Photos in Photoshop Elements

There is something about seeing an old black and white photo in color for the first time. Your grandfather's uniform turns out to be a specific shade of olive. Your mother's wedding bouquet was pink, not white. The family dog, as family legend always claimed, really was that rusty brown.

Until recently, colorizing old photos was a specialist skill that took hours per image. Photoshop Elements now includes an AI-powered tool that does most of the work in a few seconds. This post walks you through how to use it, and how to get results that look natural instead of cartoonish.

What the AI actually does

The Colorize feature in Photoshop Elements looks at the shapes, textures, and contrast in your black and white photo and predicts what the real colors were. It has been trained on millions of images, so it knows that skin is usually skin-colored, grass is usually green, and a wool coat is usually a muted tone.

It is a very good guesser, but it is still a guesser. You will get the best results when you treat its first attempt as a starting point, not a finished product.

The basic workflow

Step 1: Prepare the photo

Open your black and white photo in Photoshop Elements. Go to Expert Edit.

If the photo has a yellow or brown tone from age, convert it to true black and white first. Go to Enhance → Convert to Black and White and pick a neutral preset. Colorize works best on a clean grayscale starting point.

If the photo has damage, dust, or scratches, fix those before you colorize. The AI cannot tell the difference between a dust spot and a feature on your grandfather's face, so it may try to color the damage too. Ten minutes of cleanup ahead of time saves a lot of frustration.

Step 2: Run Colorize

Go to Enhance → Colorize Photo.

A dialog opens with four automatic variations. Elements generates these by running its AI with slightly different settings. One of them is usually closer to the truth than the others. Pick the best starting point.

You can stop here if you are happy. For most casual photos, the automatic result is good enough.

Step 3: Refine with color points

If you want better accuracy, use the Color Drops inside the Colorize dialog. This is where real control lives.

Click Add Color Drop and place a dot on a specific part of the photo. For example, click on a shirt. A color picker opens. Choose the actual color you remember the shirt being. The AI will use your hint to redo that area and the areas nearby.

A few drops go a long way. You usually need no more than five or six for a portrait:

• One for skin
• One for hair
• One for clothing
• One for the background
• One for any specific object you know the color of, like a flower or a car

Click OK when you are satisfied.

Step 4: Fine-tune in layers (optional)

For a portrait that will be printed or framed, spend a few extra minutes fine-tuning specific areas.

Create a new layer above the colorized photo. Change the layer's blend mode to Color. Now you can paint directly onto this layer with any brush, and it will only affect color, not brightness or detail.

Use a soft brush. Pick colors carefully. Paint lips a slightly warmer tone. Add a bit more red to cheeks. Deepen the color of the eyes. Small adjustments in the right places are what makes a colorized photo feel alive instead of flat.

Getting the colors right

You cannot know for sure what color everything was. But you can get close with a few rules of thumb.

Skin. Real skin is less pink than most beginners make it. Look at a photo of the same person in a later color photo if you have one. Match that tone.

Clothing. Look up the decade. A 1940s military uniform, a 1950s housecoat, or a 1970s leisure suit each had predictable palettes. A quick internet search for "1950s women's fashion colors" will point you in the right direction.

Backgrounds. Keep them muted. Colorized backgrounds that are too saturated pull attention away from the people, which defeats the point.

Light. Pay attention to the time of day in the original photo. A photo taken at golden hour should have warmer tones throughout. A cloudy day should stay slightly cooler.

When colorization is not the right choice

Not every black and white photo wants to be in color.

A formal portrait from the 1920s may have more emotional weight in its original form. A photo taken for artistic reasons, such as a deliberate black and white street scene, should usually stay as the photographer intended.

Save colorization for the photos where color would help your family connect to the moment. Childhood birthdays. Family trips. People in their younger years who are hard to picture as anything but older now.

One more idea

Colorize a photo of a grandparent at the age your child or grandchild is now. Print it. Put it next to a current photo of them. The resemblance that was hiding in black and white often becomes obvious in color.

That is the real power of the tool. It is not nostalgia. It is connection.