Top 5 Free, Best & Fast Tools to Colorize Black and White Photos in 2024

Colorized black and white photo using Color Surprise AI Pixbim

To colorize a photo is fun and gives a new life to your old photos. The best part is that it is possible convert black and white photos to color automatically in seconds with the help of software and online tools mentioned below. I have added some of my black & white photos and color photos so that you will get an idea which are best one’s both online and offline even before trying them with their pros and cons.

Best tools to colorize black and white photos are the following. All tools are arranged rank wise taking all aspects into consideration such as colored photo quality, price and ease of use. So let us see how to colorize photos that can do this job.

Colorize a Photo using Color Surprise AI by Pixbim

https://pixbim.com/colorize-photos

This is Best software so Rank is 1

It automatically converts black and white to color photo. Software is based on advance artificial intelligence and is trained on millions of pictures to detect living from non-living objects and colorizes photos accordingly.

Black and white photo to color using Color Surprise AI

Los Angeles in 1945 converted to color

The software is easy to use with 3 simple steps to colorize pictures and only takes a few seconds to colorize a photo without manual work.

• You open the application, go to File > select Open or click on the load image tab to load an image.
• Next, select the photo form your PC. The software will automatically generate a preview and show both variants side by side.
• The final step is to click on Start-Process Full Image and Save, and you will have a colored version of the picture saved in your PC within a few minutes.

They have a free version. The results are very impressive and nothing comes close to this. I colorized few photos, and all of them turned out to be great. I am impressed by the results and this is best one in the list.

Pros

• Super easy to use and fast
• Automatically converts black and white to color photo within a few seconds with high-quality results
• No manual work involved in coloring a photo
• They have a free trial version
• Can process any number of photos as there is no limit
• Can change color of areas in the photo like shirt, skin which is very useful
• Has batch mode feature where you can process several photos at once
• Great for privacy concerns as there is no uploading or storing on servers is involved. So, you are the sole owner of your input and output photos.
• Input black and white photo and output color photo are of same size( height and width are equal to original black and white image ). Why is this important? Output color image should be of the same size as input image ( height and width ). When I was trying out several tools to color photos, some of the tools that convert black&white photos to color did not preserve size, in other words my input image was of decent size say 1000x1000 pixels and my output color photo was of size like 200x200 pixels so resolution has to be preserved in other words input and output photos should be of same size which means that both input and output images should have same resolution. Input black & white image and output color image are of same size in this tool.

Cons

• Watermark appears on photo in trial version.
• You can only upload an image from PC.

Colorize using Photoshop

https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/catalog/desktop.html

This is second best software so Rank is 2

Photoshop, without a doubt, is one of the more known platforms where you can do colorization of black and white photos. It offers a lot of options, and you can do so much with it. However, it is a mechanical tool, and there are a lot of steps involved to colorize in photoshop which takes about 30 minutes to color a single photo, which makes it difficult for everyone to use except the experts.

Pros

• It knows how to show most of the spot colors on the display when you are in the Duotone mode.
• It uses color settings for converting for gray-scale into colors.
• The black channel settings contain enough information to help prevent small anomalies.
• Input image and output image are of same size so resolution is preserved.

Cons

• It is difficult to use.
• It takes a long time, up-to 30 minutes to color a single photo.
• You might have to ignore some RGB representations if you are creating spot-color multi tones.
• Adjusting curves for each picture needs a lot of practice and might be a bit tricky for many users.

Colorize black and white photos using Algorithmia

https://demos.algorithmia.com/colorize-photos

This is third best software so Rank is 3

It is an online platform that automatically colorizes your grayscale photos. It is an algorithm-based system with the help of deep learning, which processes a picture and then adds color to it.

colorized photo using algorithmia

Pros

• It is fast and easy to use
• It is an online site

Cons

• A watermark appears on the edited photo
• It uploads the photo to server
• Results are not that good when compared to others
• Sometimes input image and output image are of different sizes so resolution is not preserved so color photo is smaller than original input black and white photo.

Black and white to color photo using Colorize Photo

www.colorizephoto.com

This is fourth best software so Rank is 4

This is a website where you have to colorize a photo manually which can take a long time to color a single photo. You will have to put a reference photo and then choose colors from it to add colors to each element in your desired images with customization tools.

manual coloring using colorize photo

Pros

• Online platform for colorizing a black and white photo which is free
• Preserves input and output image size

Cons

• Coloring is manual work so it takes lot of time to color a single photo
• It is not possible to color thin objects like leaves, hair, edges.
• You have to select a color for each element which can be time taking for many users
• If you don’t choose the right image or colors, the output picture results suffer.

Colorize a picture using Lunapic

www341.lunapic.com/editor/

This is fifth best Rank software so rank is 5

Its mode of action is different than the rest of the online tools for colorizing a picture as it uses a gradient filter instead of the automatic or manual function.

Pros

• This is highly suitable for pictures that can work with two tones
• No watermark

Cons

• Only two colors can be added
• It puts limitations on the type of pictures that can be edited this way.
• It is difficult to use and is manual which can take a lot of time
• It does not provide colors that are true to the picture as results are not good.

CONCLUSION

Comparing all colored photos, their quality, price and ease of usage for different coloring tools, I would suggest Color Surprise AI. If Color Surprise AI does not suit your needs or if you have some other issues then go for Photoshop. Other than these two coloring, rest of the tools will not give you satisfactory results.

So, now you know the best tools to colorize black and white photos plus how to colorize photos with some of them. We hope that you have found your tool. All the best for coloring your black and white photos.