colorization

Colorizing B&W Photos Then and Now, From Oils to Neural Filters

The day after photography was invented in 1839, somebody pointed out that the photographs were just shades of gray – there was no color. The photography inventors knew this was a problem and probably hoped that no one would notice. Paintings were in vivid color and if photography was ever to compete with painting, there needed to be some color in them.

The Intricate Work in Restoring Photos for a Vietnam Veteran

A while back, a young man contacted me about a photo digitization and restoration project for his grandfather, who served in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. They had some photographs from this period in his life—of friends, scenery, and the culture of Vietnam—that they wanted to use for an album.

How Adobe’s Neural Filters Make Colorizing Photos Way Easier

A growing trend among retouchers and editors in the last few years has been to repair vintage photographs that have faded and been damaged over time. In addition to this restoration work, "colorizing" vintage photographs has been experiencing explosive growth. Adobe's "Colorize" Neural Filter now makes the job easier than ever.

How Hand-Painted Photographs Helped Introduce Japan to the World

When you see the term "colorized photo" you probably imagine skilled retouchers working in Photoshop, or perhaps a machine learning algorithm that does that same work automatically. But the original colorized photos were hand-painted prints made from glass plate negatives. And, as Vox explains, the best of these images came out of Japan.

Stop Upscaling and Colorizing Photos and Videos, Historians Say

Colorizing and updating photos and footage from the past is becoming more common and much easier thanks to the advancements of AI. We've shared stories and images of colorized images and videos many times over the past decade, and colorists say it is designed to bring the past forward for a modern audience. However, there are some historians who believe the process is doing more harm than good.

Colourise.sg Uses AI to Colorize B&W Photos

Want to turn some old black-and-white photos into color photos? There's an amazing new website called Colourise.sg that'll get the job done for you. It uses deep learning AI to create remarkably realistic results in just seconds with zero work on your part.

How Peter Jackson Colorized 100-Year-Old WWI Footage

Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson is out with a new highly-acclaimed World War I documentary titled They Shall Not Grow Old. Here's a 5-minute look at how Jackson colorized 100-year-old footage to give the world a fresh look at the Great War.

Google Photos to Use AI to Colorize Black-and-White Photos

Google is taking to the stage at the Google I/O developer conference this week to show off its new products and technologies, one of which is a new AI-powered version of Google Photos. The new app will feature a host of new intelligent features, including the ability to colorize black-and-white photos with one tap.

Colorized Photos of American Child Laborers

Photographer Lewis Wickes Hine once said: "There is work that profits children, and there is work that brings profit only to employers. The object of employing children is not to train them, but to get high profits from their work."

How Colorization Experts Breathe New Colors Into Old B&W Photos

We've shared some impressive work by photo colorizers who use Photoshop skills and hard work to add realistic colors into historical monochrome photos. If you're wondering how its done, check out this 7-minute video by Vox that discusses the process. (Note: there's a bit of strong language.)

Photoshop of the Future May Be Able to Auto-Colorize a B&W Photo

Colorizing old black-and-white photos with Photoshop has been a popular subject on the Internet over the past few years, as skilled retouchers use their time and skills to offer a new view of vintage images. In the future, though, software may be able colorize B&W photos with the click of a button.

Iconic Space Photos Are Actually B&W: Here’s How NASA Colorizes Hubble Shots

Did you know that the Hubble Space Telescope is only able to capture black-and-white photos? In order to capture a maximum amount of information in their space photos, NASA captures multiple black-and-white images using different filters in the camera. These images are then combined in post to create the iconic color photographs that you see published by the space agency.

The video above shows how NASA goes about colorizing the photos by compositing the individual shots.

Tutorial Shows You Three Ways to Colorize a Black and White Image in Photoshop

Colorized historical images are very popular in the photo community, but how exactly does one start colorizing photos? Getting to the skill level demonstrated by the Photoshoppers in Reddit's ColorizedHistory subreddit will take countless hours of practice, but if you want to start this Tutorial from Tuts+ is a great primer.

Video: Photo Restoration and Colorization Demonstrated Through a Time-Lapse

Digital image editing technology -- culturally controversial uses aside -- has enabled us to do some pretty amazing things. In the past, we shared a video that showed how the Internet came together to restore a WWII veteran's Navy photo to its former glory.

This time, we get to see the process in action, as Redditor thehatersalad shows us the impressive restoration and colorization work he did on an old photo of user f2ISO100's grandmother -- time-lapse style.

Time-Lapse Videos of Old B&W Photos Being Infused with Color

Earlier this year, we shared some amazing work by Swedish retoucher Sanna Dullaway, who takes historical B&W photographs and colorizes them. YouTube user IColoredItForYou is another master of restoring, retouching, and colorizing, but what's awesome about his work is that he creates behind-the-scenes videos showing how the edits are done. The above time-lapse video shows how he recently used Photoshop to colorize Margaret Bourke-White's famous 1937 photograph, titled "Bread Line during the Louisville flood, Kentucky".