Hand tinting old black and white photos

I was given a photo of my parents wedding when I was visiting recently. It will be there Diamond wedding on the 30th and yes we are having a party. My mother had said that it was a shame that her wedding photo's were in black and white  as her day was a colourful one. The photo she gave me was a small 6x4 which had been varnished which meant that when I scanned the image it was speckled and faded slightly.

So transferring it into photoshop I endeavoured to restore the image as best I could. Using a combination of layers and the filter-noise-dust and scratches tool which can be found on the top tool bar under Filters. I managed to get a half decent image which I enhanced using curves and the sharpening tool. The result can be seen below.

I was quite happy with the result but thought I would have a go at hand tinting using photoshop. The secret is to gain as much information as possible. It was easy in this case as my mother and father naturally remember the day quite vividly. However I had to uses several images to sample the colours required to complete a tinted version. The flowers were Pink and White Carnations so I searched on line for images of said flowers and matched the colour. My Granddaughter has the same colour hair as my mother did when she was young so I sampled that from a photo of her. The skin tones I got from my Grandson and my fathers hair from my daughter. The church walls and pavement came from Selby Abbey in Yorkshire and the green was taken from some trees near the Abbey. The rest was guesswork. To do this in photoshop open the image and select the brush tool, On the top tool bar where it says Mode select Colour and set the opacity to 70% then paint away. Build the colours gradually especially skin tones. Do the highlights first then add shadow etc to make it look realistic. The opacity can be reduced for delicate areas such as the stonework showing through the wedding dress. The hardest part was the greenery some guess work was needed and a lot of patience as it can be tedious. However it is worth the effort and with practice looks pretty realistic.

I intend to give my parents this mounted and framed as an A3 print for their anniversary. I hope they like it, Together for 60 years isn't that great?