Colourise a black-and-white photo
Adds believable period-accurate colour to a monochrome photograph.
The prompt
69 wordsColourise this black-and-white photograph with natural, period-accurate colour. Use realistic skin tones appropriate to the subject, and muted dyes consistent with the era's fabrics and paints rather than modern saturated colour. Keep the original lighting direction, contrast and shadow depth intact. Do not change any facial feature, pose or composition. Avoid oversaturation — the result should look like a colour photograph taken at the time, not a colourised one.
Getting the best result
- 1
Name the decade if you know it ('taken in India in the late 1960s') — it markedly improves fabric and paint colours.
- 2
If skin looks orange, add: 'cooler, more neutral skin tones'.
- 3
Colourise first, then run a separate restoration pass. Asking for both at once usually does neither well.
Where to use it
Paste this into any AI image tool that accepts a text instruction — upload your photo first, then paste the prompt as the edit instruction. The wording is deliberately explicit, because the constraints are what stop the model drifting away from what you asked for.