Giving color to a black and white photo

Hello, I have simple and yet hard question. How do I turn a black and white picture into a colored picture?

Let me be more specific. If I wanted to turn a colored picture into black and white, all I had to do is open with Preview and set the saturation to zero. I could as well open it in iPhoto and select the black and white effect. Plain and simple.

And thats what Im looking for regarding my question. I want to open a black and white photo in some application, press a button, and instantly make it colored, every pixel of it. Boom, thats how fast I want.

Im at first, looking for a free solution. I have alredy installed on my OS the applications Preview, iPhoto, Xee and Picassa. Does any of these do the trick? Is there an application online I can download?

Any help is apreciated

Hi,

According to this walk through Picassa can do what you want.How to Turn Something on a Black & White Photo to Color in Picasa? | eHow.com

thanks for the reply but it did not work. And thats hardly pressing a button. The solution given revolves choosing yellow and purple tones, wich are subjective.

I want an application that analyzes the black and white photo and automatically sets color to it.

LeandrodaFL said:

thanks for the reply but it did not work. And thats hardly pressing a button. The solution given revolves choosing yellow and purple tones, wich are subjective.

I want an application that analyzes the black and white photo and automatically sets color to it.

Click to expand...

I don't think such an application exist. If it does please do give us the link.

Ihave not seen an app for OS X either and only one that I know of is for Windows. That would be Black Magic. But, you can try:

Coloriage from Arkvis with a 10 day free trial.

Available as a stand alone app or plugin for Photoshop.

Tutorial

You're simply not going a to get 1 click solution. The colour information simply isn't present in a greyscale image.

At best, see Coloriage suggested above, you have to 'suggest' colours for an area. The tool will then have an attempt to detect edges of where there's a colour change.

It's a complex business at best and really very different to just desaturating an image.