Begin with a clean grayscale source
A readable scan gives colour prediction a better starting point than a badly faded, scratched or tiny copy. If the photograph needs restoration, repair its tone and damage first while retaining an untouched master. Otherwise, a scratch or stain may become part of the predicted colour treatment.
Choose a supported JPG, PNG or WebP within the size limits shown in Colorize Image. The first use loads an approximately 130 MB local engine, so leave time for the status message to progress. A stalled first run can be an asset or device-memory problem rather than a reason to repeatedly submit the same file.
Review the first draft as an interpretation
Run the first colourization and move the comparison control between the original and result. Examine faces, clothing, foliage and the sky separately. A pleasant overall result can still contain an implausible colour on a particular object.
Predicted colour does not establish what the scene actually looked like. Two plausible predictions may differ, and the original grayscale values do not uniquely identify a fabric’s colour. Family recollections or another verified photograph can guide correction, but the output remains a colourized interpretation.
Replace a specific wrong colour
Suppose a jacket is predicted as orange but you want purple. Use the colour-region selection or painting controls to identify the jacket, choose a replacement colour and apply the change. Inspect whether skin, nearby objects or similarly coloured background areas were unintentionally included.
Make the selection as specific as the available controls allow. Use smaller brush corrections near an edge and review the result before continuing. Replacing every orange region in a picture is a different task from recolouring only one person’s clothing.
Balance the corrected result
A strongly saturated replacement can look unnatural against subtle skin and background tones. Adjust the overall colour strength and brightness only as needed, then compare again. It is often better to make one measured correction than to repeatedly increase every control.
Colorize Image and Recolor Image have different roles. Colorize predicts colour and offers corrections to that draft. Recolor remaps RGB or creative CMYK channels across the image. A channel swap can create an interesting effect, but it is not a targeted historical colour correction.
Export and keep the original context
Download the result in a format that suits its destination and check the exported file. Keep the original grayscale image and a short note that the new copy was colourized. This is especially useful when sharing a family archive where someone may later mistake the coloured copy for an original colour photograph.
If the engine cannot finish, retry with a smaller input and confirm that the local package is served correctly. Larger images and processing assets consume device memory even though the photo pixels remain local. A smaller test image can help distinguish a decoding issue from a slow first model load.
Replace an unwanted predicted colour
After the automatic colour draft, compare important objects with any reliable reference. Use the colour-replacement controls when a treatment is unwanted, such as changing an orange area to purple. Inspect neighbouring shades so the correction does not unintentionally affect another object.
A chosen replacement is an editorial decision. It can improve the version you want to share without proving what colour the clothing or scenery originally was. Keep the grayscale source and label a published colourized copy appropriately.
