There are many techniques out there that are use to colorize a image. I only know a few and hope to learn more new and easy ways to colorize but here is a tutorial one of the ways of colorizing a photo.

Note:I made the images smaller because I didn't want to enlarge them and make them look big on the thread.


Your first step is to open up your b & w image.

Make a new layer on your layer palate. After making a new layer, name the new layer "skin" and set the blend mode to color. Click on the brush in the toolbox.
After you clicked the brush in the toolbox you would notice a change in the toolbar up on top. Click on the little triangle pointing down to your left and reset your brush.
After resetting you would notice a change in your brushes. In this tutorial we would use the 200 pixel fuzzy brush.
Now that you click on the selected brush change your foreground color to a desired skin tone color. I would use #dd9847. Now bring your brush over to the image and brush on the skin. You would see that it suddenly turns into real skin!

Keep doing this until you get all the skin. Sometimes you would have to lower the pixel in the brush to go around the edges of the lips. After completing the skin you can move onto the makeup and hairstyle. This would just take the same steps. You just have to use your creative mind and chose whatever color you want for the make up.

My final result:


This is completed in Adobe photoshop cs2