Vintage photos are not created equal—especially when it comes to color. Take these three vintage photos, each with its own shade of black and white or sepia. If I were to put all of them on one page in a book or even on different pages in the same book, they wouldn’t look like they matched.

So save yourself some trouble and unify the colors of all your black and white photos using one of the Color actions in the Heritage Photo Actions set to instantly give each photo the same look. Of course you can use these actions on a color photo to turn it into black and white or sepia as well, but I mostly use them with black and white heritage photos.

To follow along open the practice photos called Heritage-Color 1, 2, and 3 in the class download folder called Heritage-Practice-Photos.

In the Layers panel you can see that each photo only has one layer—the original photo layer.

Activate the Actions panel or select it in the Menu Bar by choosing Window → Actions. Click on the arrow to the left of the Heritage Photo Actions folder to open the set and see the individual actions. There are three Color actions: a regular black and white, a warm black and white, and sepia.

Click on the photo you want to start with and click on the color action of your choice to select it. I’ll start with black and white. Click the triangular Play button at the bottom of the Actions panel to run the action…and that changes the color.

Click on each of the other photos to activate them and run the same action…and now all three photos match because they have the same coloring.

In the Layers panel you can see that I have a second layer. This is the color layer produced by the action. Here’s how the photo looked before and here’s how it looks now.

Let’s hide the color layers by clicking on the visibility icon to the left of the thumbnail…on all three photos…and now let’s try the next color, which is a warm black and white. This is my personal favorite. I use it for almost all my black and white photos.

And, again, we now have matching photos. This black has a very small amount of brown added and has less contrast than the pure black and white. Here’s the pure black and white…and here’s the warm black and white. Because it has less contrast it shows a little more detail, but either color can look great—it just depends on the photos and your preference.

Let’s hide these layers… and try the SEPIA action…and there they are.

You may be wondering when would be the best time to change the color if you plan to edit the photo further. I usually change the color right away before I start editing—especially if the color is kind of bad to start with—but occasionally I do all the editing first and then change the color. You can actually change the color at any time along the way but I personally think it’s less confusing if you either start with it or end with it.

So that’s how to unify the color of your black and white photos. It’s amazing what a difference it makes to have them all matching when you create a family story project!

Vintage photos are not created equal—especially when it comes to color. Take these three vintage photos, each with its own shade of black and white or sepia. If I were to put all of them on one page in a book or even on different pages in the same book, they wouldn’t look like they matched.

So save yourself some trouble and unify the colors of all your black and white photos using one of the Color actions in the Heritage Photo Actions set to instantly give each photo the same look. Of course you can use these actions on a color photo to turn it into black and white or sepia as well, but I mostly use them with black and white heritage photos.

To follow along open the practice photos called Heritage-Color 1, 2, and 3 in the class download folder called Heritage-Practice-Photos.

I’m using the All Floating view so I can easily compare all three photos and, as you can see, they don’t match in color. You can access the All Floating view from the Layout Menu in the Task Bar below the desktop but that particular view will only be available if you already checked that option in Preferences. to do that press Ctrl K (Mac: Cmd K) and check “Allow Floating Documents in Expert Mode” and click OK.

Currently I have the Layers panel selected in the Panel Bin over on the right and when I click on each photo you can see that each photo only has one layer—the original photo layer.

Click on the Actions panel tab to select it or choose Window → Actions from the Menu Bar. Click on the triangle to the left of the Heritage Photo Actions folder to open the set and see the individual actions. There are three Color actions: a regular black and white, a WARM black and white, and SEPIA.

Click on the photo you want to start with and click on the color action of your choice to select it. I’ll start with black and white. Click the triangular Play button in the upper right corner of the Actions panel to run the action…and that changes the color.

Click on each of the other photos to activate them and run the same action…and now all three photos match because they have the same coloring.

Activate the Layers panel and now you can see that I have another layer. This is the color layer. Here’s how it looked before and here’s how it looks now.

Let’s hide the color layers by clicking on the visibility icon to the left of the thumbnail…on all three photos.

And now let’s try the next color, which is a WARM black and white. This is my personal favorite. I use it for almost all my black and white photos…and, again, we now have matching photos.

This black has a very small amount of brown added and has less contrast than the pure black and white. Let’s go back to the Layers panel. Here’s the pure black and white…and here’s the warm black and white. Because it has less contrast it shows a little more detail, but either color can work depending on the photos.

Let’s hide these layers… and try the SEPIA action…and there they are. If I want a little more contrast I can run the pure black and white action first…and then run the sepia action, so let’s do that. We’ll make the black and white action visible here and then we’ll run the Sepia action…and that gives you a little bit more contrast.

Let’s go back to the Layer panel. Here’s the more contrast one and here’s the little bit warmer one.

You may be wondering when would be the best time to change the color if you plan to edit the photo further. I usually change the color right away before I start editing—especially if the color is kind of bad to start with—but occasionally I do all the editing first and then change the color. You can actually change the color at any time along the way but I personally think it’s less confusing if you either start with it or end with it.

So that’s how to unify the color of your black and white photos. It’s amazing what a difference it makes to have them all matching when you create a family story project!