Grayscale tiff file back to color?

[Seano1]

Hello,

I was wondering if it is possible to change a tiff file in grayscale mode to color? The file was orginially in color but then converted to grayscale mode and and saved as a tiff file. 

Can anyone help with this?

[TheDigitalDog]

Can you convert Grayscale mode to Color; yes. Use the Image>Mode menu option. Now instead of one color channel, you have three (RGB)

Will the color reappear; NO. 

[Seano1]

Then there would be no way to get the color back?

[TheDigitalDog]

Then there would be no way to get the color back?

By @Seano1

The original color rendering is gone from that document. 

[c.pfaffenbichler]

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@Seano1 wrote:

Then there would be no way to get the color back?

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Where would you expect the color information to reside in a grayscale image? 

[GoombaGurl]

The colour information is gone, deleted. There is a reason that creating an image in greyscale makes the file size so much smaller. One channel of colour.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

If necessary try 

Filter > Neural Filters > Colorize 

[George_F]

I've been meaning to try this filter!  Does it work well?  I don't run into a situation where I need to colorize a b&w very often.  All the ways I know to colorize a grayscale image are complicated and time consuming.

[gener7]

You have MacOS according to your tags, you can recover older versions using Time Machine sometimes without an external drive if it's no more than a day or two. MacOS APFS file system does keep local file snapshots which would restore the file before you converted it.

https://www.imore.com/how-us-time-machine-local-snapshots-recover-data-your-mac-laptop

There are also great cloud storage backup options, Backblaze being my personal favorite.

If restoring files is going to cost time, money and business, it may be well worth the investment.

https://www.pcmag.com/picks/best-backup-services

[George_F]

There are ways to colorize a grayscale image, but I do not believe it's possible to revert back to the original colors.

This doesn't help you now, but for future projects I'd recommend making an additional layer to convert to grayscale as a way of working non-destructively.