AF Photo colouring B&W Photo

[jeffers]

Having a go at colouring an old Black and White photo of poor quality I realise. I scanned the original as a Tiff file then converted to RGB 8 bit in AFphoto then played. 

Using example tutorials as guidance and using adjustment layers ("recolour" and playing with sliders then inverting layer and painting out bits as a mask, or directly painting on a new pixel layer and trying different blend modes etc.) Fairly happy with results. So my question is......

is there a way to get the brick wall mortar joints to a seperate whiter/grey colour? as you can see the red/brown effect for the bricks is in the joints also and I would like them to be more natural?

Any hints tips appreciated

[Lisbon]

"is there a way to get the brick wall mortar joints to a seperate whiter/grey colour?"

Not easy to explain but yes, its possible.
But first you need to have an idea of the lightness level of the gray joints.
L ~ 70% seems a good value.

Next add a gradient map from black to white. And add some colors
Position 0% #000000 (Black)
Position 34% #853D27 (some brick colour i found after a google search. The position of 34% found by trial & error)
Position 70% #AEAFAB (70% comes from previous analysis)
Position 100% #FFFFFF (White)

And after some masking...

[jeffers]

Complicated. but something to play around with so many thanks for the pointer to a way of achieving better result

[Lisbon]

Your welcome.

I agree, gradient maps can be very powerfull but not to friendly to use.