Quick Start Tutorial

This simple tutorial will show you the basics of colorizing a black and white photo using Recolored.

1. In this tutorial we are going to colorize a black and white photo of a beach ball. First we need to open the starting image. Choose File → Open from the menu or click the Open button on the toolbar.
2. Browse to the "Examples" folder which should reside in the installation folder. If you chose the default folder during installation it will be located at "C:\Program Files\Recolored\Examples". Select the file "beachball_01.rcl" and click Open. The image will be displayed in a new window inside Recolored.
3. Select the Brush Tool from the tool palette, and set the brush size to 2.
4. Left click on the Color Palette to choose the first color for the beach ball, let us start with a red color - we used RGB 232, 35, 23
   
5. We must now mark the part of the ball that should be colored red. Draw an outline within the dark band on the right side of the beach ball. Press and hold the left mouse button while you move the mouse to draw. It is generally a good idea to draw close to the boundaries of an object. Select a green color (RGB 106, 156, 99) for the top left band and outline it as before. Do the same for the bottom band, this time with a yellow color (RGB 238, 236, 15). The image should now look similar to this:
   
6. To check on our progress let's click on the Colorize button. Recolored runs the colorization progress and produces a result like this:
   
7. As you can see we are not finished yet. The colors from the bands have bled into the background as well as the remaining parts of the ball. Let's fix the light parts of the ball first. We do all our drawing in the same window, so start by closing the Result1 window by clicking the 'X'-button. Choose a low saturated blue color (RGB 116, 136, 139), almost grey as seen in the image below. Mark the light areas of the ball until you have an image like this:
   
8. Let's check on our progress again by clicking the Colorize button.
   
9. We are almost done, we just need to eliminate the color bleeding in the background. Select bright white from the color palette (RGB 255,255,255). This color has a special meaning in Recolored. Areas marked with white will remain the same color as in the original image. Now, draw white lines around the ball as seen below.
   
10. Click on the Colorize button to produce the final result.
    

We have provided a file which include the strokes from step 9 above in the Examples folder. The filename is "beachball_final.rcl".