Photo Retouching and Colorization

As I said in my last post, I've been getting re-interested in restoring some old family photos. I've started pretty simple, and am working my way up to a very badly damaged photo of who I believe is my grandmother's cousin. Today, I played around with a lovely photo of my grandmother, Nellie Joyce Tomblin Cummons. I will show you three versions of the picture, 1) my original scan, 2)cropped to 8x10 with black and white levels adjustment and blemishes removed, and 3) a colorized version of the photo.

(original)

(resized, b&w adjustment, blemish removal)

(colorized)

I'm always torn between color and black and white photos. I love black and white, it softens features and gives everything a romantic feel. Sometimes, however, I forget that although pictures were black and white, life very much happened in color! When I started working on this picture, I only noticed Gran's lovely white dress and strappy shoes. It was only when I started to colorize the photo that I realized her dress was not indicitive of the time of year the background suggests. I noticed the bare trees, the empty fields, and the leaves around her feet. So, I created a color pallete of fall colors from this picture on flickr to try and recreate an accurate background. What do you think?