Colorize with an explicit source and scope.

Select an image and open Adjustments → Colorize. Choose the operation that matches your intent; the controls and required inputs change with the mode.

Choose the workflow

Tint / Selective Recolor

Set an absolute hue or rotate existing hue. Whole image is an explicit scope; mask image limits coverage.

Offline · no model

Palette Colorize

Select document swatches, then choose shaded influence or strict palette bytes.

Offline · no model

Line art (color hints)

Paint hints on the drawing. Color spreads to the linework, gaps can be sealed, and unfilled regions stay transparent.

Offline · no model

Reference Transfer

Choose a separate reference image to transfer its global color distribution. This is not object matching.

Offline · reference required

Harmonize

Move target chroma toward a reference distribution while retaining target structure and source lightness.

Offline · reference required

Photo Colorization

Use local DDColor only when a verified model is installed. It proposes plausible colors, not historical truth.

Model-gated · artifact status is visible

Tint and recolor

Choose Tint / Selective Recolor.
Use Whole image for an intentional full-image tint, or choose Mask image and provide a real grayscale/alpha mask.
Choose Set absolute hue when the target hue should be stable regardless of the source hue. Choose Rotate existing hue for a relative shift.
Adjust Saturation, Lightness, Chroma, Blend, and the conservative protection switches. Zero Blend or zero coverage leaves the source unchanged.
Preview, inspect the result, then Apply. Apply creates a new embedded result layer; the source remains available.

Lightness is source CIELAB L* preservation. It is not HSL lightness and does not promise calibrated linear-luminance preservation across arbitrary output profiles. Out-of-gamut target colors are clipped at the browser's sRGB RGBA8 boundary.

Palette colorize

Select one or more document swatches. One color is valid for a tonal map. Shaded mapping keeps source lightness and can create tonal shades that are not literal swatch bytes. Strict mapping reaches only the selected sRGB colors at 100% adherence; at lower adherence it intentionally blends toward them and is no longer a strict constraint.

Line art from color hints

Choose Line art (color hints).
Paint color scribbles on a copy of the drawing and choose it as the hint image. Hints can be a different resolution; every hint pixel above its alpha threshold is a seed.
Set the Line threshold so the strokes become barriers, and raise Gap closing if color leaks through a thin break in the linework.
Preview. The report shows how much of the reachable area was filled and how many hint pixels were used. Unhinted or unreachable regions stay transparent, so the result layers under other work.
Apply. Strokes and antialiased edges are preserved over the fills.

This is a deterministic fill, not semantic region detection. It cannot know that a region is an eye or a shirt, and a gap wider than the gap-closing radius still leaks.

Reference transfer and harmonize

Choose a separate image file. Varve passes both the reference identity and decoded pixels to the engine, validates empty/transparent references, ignores transparent border pixels in the statistics, and supports different source/reference dimensions. The result is a global color-distribution transfer; it does not know that a shirt in one image is the same object as a shirt in another.

Photo colorization readiness

Photo Colorization is disabled until Settings → Models reports a verified DDColor model. The current release includes the adapter, quality-mapped preview, tensor validation, and the official upstream input contract (grayscale-derived RGB, square model input) plus full-resolution reconstruction that combines predicted chroma with the original source detail and alpha. It does not ship an unverified checkpoint.

If the model is unavailable, use Tint / Selective Recolor for deterministic work. Varve does not silently substitute a tint and label it photo AI, and it does not upload the source image as a fallback.

Review, save, and export

Preview runs at the quality mode's model resolution; Apply rebuilds the approved predicted colors over the full-resolution source, so the committed colors match the preview.
The preview includes a split-view comparator against the original, so changes can be inspected before committing.
A changed source or input revision makes an asynchronous result stale instead of replacing unrelated edits.
Apply stores accepted result bytes in the document's embedded asset table, so save/reopen/export does not require the model again.
The current result is materialized and source-preserving. Re-editable Colorize recipes and persistent painted hints are planned, not implied by the duplicate layer.