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Black and white to colour!

PaulE

PaulE

master brummie
I recently came across a website called palette.fm; it uses artificial intelligence to colorise old black and white photographs. As you can see, the results are pretty impressive. You can use it for free (without even registering) but the maximum size of the output image is limited, as seen here. Or if you want higher resolution you can pay a subscription.

I've had a lot of fun turning old family photos into colour! I find it helps to use a photoediting program to make final adjustments, although I haven't done that here.
Erskine_St_1940s.jpg

Erskine_St_1940s_rmWZl__please_credit[palette.fm].jpg
 
Each to his own I suppose but personally I don't like to see colourising of old photo's. I post sometimes on a Fb group called " The golden age of travel" where beautiful old photo's of rare classic vehicles and atmospheric steam engines etc are posted and immediately someone races to post a colour version. One colourised recently of a busy 1920's street in New York displayed the road as green! :eek:
 
If one wants to colourise photos for their own purposes that is fine by me. But when these creations are posted on facebook and sometimes even on here and do not make it clear that they are colourised, then this is a distortion of the truth.
 
PaulE said:
I recently came across a website called palette.fm; it uses artificial intelligence to colorise old black and white photographs. As you can see, the results are pretty impressive. You can use it for free (without even registering) but the maximum size of the output image is limited, as seen here. Or if you want higher resolution you can pay a subscription.

I've had a lot of fun turning old family photos into colour! I find it helps to use a photoediting program to make final adjustments, although I haven't done that here.
View attachment 180633

View attachment 180631
Click to expand...
Usually not a fan of colorization, however that looks quite good.
 
mikejee said:
If one wants to colourise photos for their own purposes that is fine by me. But when these creations are posted on facebook and sometimes even on here and do not make it clear that they are colourised, then this is a distortion of the truth.
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i am with you mike...not a fan of colourising black and whites but each to their own.. however i can see how its a nice little pastime for some people..

lyn
 
Perhaps I was unwise to post a 'before and after' picture of a Birmingham street scene, as it might have given the impression I thought we could 'improve' all our black and white Birmingham photos by colourising them; that is certainly not the case. Who knows what errors exist in the colour version?

However I do think there is a case for colourising some old photos. For example, I had been told that in the 1930's my grandfather had a wonderful garden to the rear of his house. Until now I had only seen a boring black and white image - but now I have seen it with a blue sky (correct), a green/brown lawn (also correct), stone walls and shrubbery with dark green leaves I am much more impressed. Or the picture of my grandmother, taken 100 years ago when she was about 17, I see now a picture of a pretty teenage girl, with brown hair and lifelike skin colour, and it doesn't really bother me that the cardigan she was wearing might have been dark red and not dark blue. On the important points the colourised picture is correct.
 
PaulE said:
Perhaps I was unwise to post a 'before and after' picture of a Birmingham street scene, as it might have given the impression I thought we could 'improve' all our black and white Birmingham photos by colourising them; that is certainly not the case. Who knows what errors exist in the colour version?

However I do think there is a case for colourising some old photos. For example, I had been told that in the 1930's my grandfather had a wonderful garden to the rear of his house. Until now I had only seen a boring black and white image - but now I have seen it with a blue sky (correct), a green/brown lawn (also correct), stone walls and shrubbery with dark green leaves I am much more impressed. Or the picture of my grandmother, taken 100 years ago when she was about 17, I see now a picture of a pretty teenage girl, with brown hair and lifelike skin colour, and it doesn't really bother me that the cardigan she was wearing might have been dark red and not dark blue. On the important points the colourised picture is correct.
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I don’t think you were unwise! Variety is the spice of life and you created a robust dialog!
 
My dad had some special inks to "tint" photos in a very delicate way. He would put a gentle pink on cheeks or light colour on a bouquet or hat, and colour on hair. I still have the bottles but they dried up many years ago!
rosie.
 
rosie said:
My dad had some special inks to "tint" photos in a very delicate way. He would put a gentle pink on cheeks or light colour on a bouquet or hat, and colour on hair. I still have the bottles but they dried up many years ago!
rosie.
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Try adding a little methylated spirit or white spirit to them, you may be able to reconstitute them.
 
I should have used different images in my original post. Compare these: a proper colour picture, that picture converted to sepia, the sepia picture recoloured by palette.fm. How does it know it was a glass of orange juice, and not beer for example?
Test.jpegTest_BW.jpgTest_BW_EJQNq__please_credit[palette.fm].jpg
 
I am dropping this into the conversation, because it is not my subject and I need to read more. Weren't some very early 'Dads Army' shows recently shown colourised, because someone clever had managed to deduce some form of colour information in the original black and white reels? This was not AI as far as I know, but real colour signals somehow embedded in the way the B&W was recorded.
Andrew.
 
It's like a spot the difference for modern age. ;)

Interesting how the two orange cups (?) on the back shelf are now not only no longer orange but are 2 different colours.
 
Brummie a long time ago said:
I am dropping this into the conversation, because it is not my subject and I need to read more. Weren't some very early 'Dads Army' shows recently shown colourised, because someone clever had managed to deduce some form of colour information in the original black and white reels? This was not AI as far as I know, but real colour signals somehow embedded in the way the B&W was recorded.
Andrew.
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I think that Ted Turner (of CCN) was the first to commercially produce colorized films (movies), it was a love/hate thing then and is still going.
 
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