Source:www.shuttertalk.com

OK class take out your coloring books and crayons, it's fun time.

Do you have any old, drab, but treasured black and white photos? If not I'll bet your parents or grandparents do.

Why not bring them up to date and restore the images to better than their former glory, by hand coloring them, but without the mess, and tediousness of actual paints, and the possibility of ruining them?

I'm old enough to remember a time when the actual hand coloring of black and white pictures was still being done although its heyday had already passed.

My father had some that he did years before I was born and I did a few myself just for fun when I was a kid.

Some people were very good at it, and gave the photos the appearance of an oil or watercolor painting, even though the object was to make them look like color photographs.

Now, with a digital scanner and Photoshop, or some equivalent programs, you can impart a great hand colored look to those old photos, and if you screw up you can either undo the goof or start all over.

Check out the great job the author of this digital hand coloring tutorial did on the photo above.

Why don't you borrow someone's old black and white photos under the guise of making copies for yourself, and then subject the printed scans with this treatment. You can surprise them with their "new" old photos on the next special occasion, such as a birthday.

I'll bet they'll love the results.