Colorization 2 - Photoshop Contest [20 entries]

Winning entry, with a score of:

64.1%

By Floortje1973

Contest goal:

The goal of this contest is very simple: take any gray-scale photo and give it more colors! If you don't have a gray-scale photo, take a color photo and turn it into gray-scale first... then give it completely different colors.

You can also use an old black and white photo that was made before color photography was invented, and then colorize it as realistic as possible. ( Example tutorial: Colorize a vintage photo )

Realism is not necessary however, you can also give unusual colors and color combinations to your photo... Combinations that do not exist in real life.
Don't forget to post the originals in your source list, or in your SBS guide. Drawings are not allowed. Your photo must be fully colorized, no gray-scales can be visible in your work.
Remember, that only one single photo can be used! No chops are allowed in this one.

Status: finished. Check out the winners below!

Contest Moderator: Submit period has ended, new entries uploaded after Friday Febr.4, 2011 20.00 GMT will be removed. ( 5 years and 3244 days ago )

jawshoewhah: You know this contest would have been a lot more challenging if Black and white pictures (that means they had to be old ones, not gray scaled in Ps) because a lot of these entries don't really look any different. ( 5 years and 3243 days ago )

Howdie stranger!
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Pin-up Girl - created by Floortje1973

Favs: 8

SBS: 2

Hi-res

Rank: 1/20

Score: 64.1% (35)

25398 views

PLEASE, take some time to read the description ;-)

I love pin-up girls, especially those from the early days.. I have been searching for beautiful old shots and it was very hard to find one respecting the "explicit nudity" rules on pxleyes, most of the images are â€œsurpriseâ€ nude, in a very beautiful way, it has to be said. And there for a warning when you visit the source link, stock page.
A big thank you to Gentlemansclubstock on DeviantArt.

I found her and instantly fell in love ;-)

If I have to put a date on this photo, I would guess it's been taken around 1920 - 1930. The roaring 20's, flapper era, maybe later. That would mean she was born around 1900..
I have been searching through old pin-up girls from that time and she has a striking resemblance with, for example, Marion Davies, see http://www.google.nl/images?um=1&hl=nl&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Anl%3Aofficial&biw=1221&bih=866&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=Marion+Davies&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=

I wanted this image to be as close to real as possible. I could have gone overboard on a psychedelic theme but I wanted to show the picture how it would have been taken so many years ago.. Through the eyes of the photographer, may he probably rest in peace.

The tapestries behind the girl I did some research on too.
I found out that Jean Baptiste Oudry designed a series of tapestries (1736-1749) depicting the hunts of Louis XV (Wikipedia)
In this photo there are two different tapestries, if they are real that is to be considered, but it seems they where duplicated much in the early 20th century. I found some similar things in both tapestries, but there are differences in these and the one on the photo, witch I found out while painting. I have to say I did use those tapestries to help me deciding on color in the clothing of the â€œhunting menâ€. I wanted the colorized image to be as close as real as possible, I thought she deserved that. The images I used for reference is one of a Antique store in Belgium, and one is for sale on a Belgian Ebay kind of site, I have contacted both and I will provide the links in the source.

Needless to say, this image has so much detail.. I have spend hours colorizing this image. It has been a hell of a job.

I started out with the original image witch and got rid of some imperfections. I duplicated the layer and with a levels adjustment layer changed the overall look of the image. Made it somewhat darker and got rid of the grey-ish glow.

The original image is in my sbs, as well as a animated sbs wich shows you the process of colorizing. I hope you can appreciate this work, there are many hour involved! I put one up in hi-res as well. Take a look at it! Every detail I put in pixel by pixel..
(5 years and 3247 days ago)

3 Sources:

35 Comments

Pin-up, Girl, pinup, pin, colorize

beauty - created by sanjugs

Favs: 0

SBS: n/a

Hi-res

Rank: 2/20

Score: 58.4% (30)

11341 views

Special Thanks to Sources Photo...trublueboy (5 years and 3250 days ago)

1 Source:

1: source1

11 Comments

beauty

Lady Esther Ralston - created by langstrum

Favs: 3

SBS: 2

Hi-res

Rank: 3/20

Score: 58.2% (25)

15877 views

That's so interesting to do the colorization, it's like giving the second life to an old photo.
Thanks to inspyretash-stock for the great vintage portrait, lady Esther Ralston looks gorgeous.
I want to give her a quite modern looking with highlighted hair and some make-ups.
Basically what I've done is exactly the same as this tutorial: http://www.planetphotoshop.com/colorizing-a-grayscale-image.html
The only difference is I used one top layer with overlay blending mode to control the lighting because the BW image neutralizes some parts of the colored image.
I just show in SBS the comparison one by one of the original one and the colorized one, plus the work in progress in animation.
Since it's the vintage photo, I can't have the higher resolution version, but the quality is not that bad. (5 years and 3250 days ago)

1 Source: