Colorize creates the effect of a black-and-white picture that has been “colorized.” Colorized images look like black-and-white photos that have been painted over with color in selected areas. You get to choose the colors that "paint over" the image.
Setup
Select three paint colors to dominate the image. Then adjust their influence on the picture, as well as tweak color smoothing and saturation.
- The three Color controls set the palette of paint colors that will stand out in the image. Start by deciding if you want to use one, two or three colors in the image. Use the dropper to select the paint colors directly from the video image. Note that the brightness or dullness of a color isn't important, but its hue is. For example, you can select dark green or light green as a "paint over" color. The result will be the same in the final image. If needed, refine the color further by clicking on the color swatch, then edit in the color chooser.
Try to avoid choosing paint colors that are close in hue--such as burgundy and red--especially if one blends into the other in the picture. When paint colors are close, you may get a blotchy result.
- The Smoothing control smoothes out small fluctuations in color that might add small color artifacts to the picture. Typically, start with smoothing off (all the way to the left). If small glitches appear at the boundaries between colors, dial up smoothing to remove them.
- The three Strength knobs control the influence of the associated paint color. The stronger the paint, the more it is used to color neighboring hues. Turn Strength completely off to disable a color.
- Saturation set the color intensity for the painted colors. Drag to the left to gradually remove the colorization until the picture is simply black and white. Drag to the right for an increasingly saturated, garish look. The center setting roughly approximates color saturation from the original picture.