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Colorizing black and white photos with deep learning

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Re: Colorizing black and white photos with deep learning

#41

Post by nerdponx »

WalterBright wrote: post #33
vwcx wrote: post #22

As a professional photo editor and historian, colorized photos really agitate me. I'm all for the creation of new ways to get people to engage with historical primary documentation, but the nuance that these colorizations are interpretations gets lost immediately. Do an image search for "D-Day in color" and try to tell me which results are original color negatives and which are colorizations made by teenagers. I'm al…

I like colorized historical photos. It brings them to life in a remarkable way. I'd like to see the old B+W movies colorized (the Ted Turner ones don't count, as they were done very poorly). Sure, the colors will never be exact, because we don't know what the original colors were. But that doesn't matter in any material way.

Agreed. Interpretation or not, I don't see a problem as long as the colorization is not outright inaccurate. Also consider that for a long time people didn't even have photos and only had illustrations and written descriptions to go on.

Re: Colorizing black and white photos with deep learning

#42

Post by whatrocks »

web007 wrote: post #40
whatrocks wrote: post #14

I'd like to train this on color comic strips and then run something traditionally black and white like xkcd through it. Seems like it could make the colorization part of hand drawn animation much easier.

You'll probably want something closer to a GAN like pix2pix - https://phillipi.github.io/pix2pix/ An example implementation would look something like edges2cats https://affinelayer.com/pixsrv/

edges2cats is already way too fun. Thank you for the link!

Re: Colorizing black and white photos with deep learning

#43

Post by olalonde »

WalterBright wrote: post #34
vwcx wrote: post #22

As a professional photo editor and historian, colorized photos really agitate me. I'm all for the creation of new ways to get people to engage with historical primary documentation, but the nuance that these colorizations are interpretations gets lost immediately. Do an image search for "D-Day in color" and try to tell me which results are original color negatives and which are colorizations made by teenagers. I'm al…

> I'm also a little confused as to why colorizations always aim to restore color to the equivalent of a faded color negative, with muted tonality and grain. Many movies set in the past, or that have flashbacks to the past, will often mute the colors. Most modern movies muck around with the colors in post production, too. The worst is when they go for the blue/orange palette.

> The worst is when they go for the blue/orange palette.

http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-ho...

Re: Colorizing black and white photos with deep learning

#45

Post by mc32 »

vwcx wrote: post #22

As a professional photo editor and historian, colorized photos really agitate me. I'm all for the creation of new ways to get people to engage with historical primary documentation, but the nuance that these colorizations are interpretations gets lost immediately. Do an image search for "D-Day in color" and try to tell me which results are original color negatives and which are colorizations made by teenagers. I'm al…

I think there was a cable TV channel a longtime ago which might have been a Turner property --they would get rights to some classic B&W movie and colorize it --I'm sure the tech used back then was somewhat primitive but the results were horrific --but of course "Color!"

Re: Colorizing black and white photos with deep learning

#46

Post by KGIII »

vwcx wrote: post #30
justinator wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also a little confused as to why colorizations always aim to restore color to the equivalent of a faded color negative, with muted tonality and grain. Human logic is funny. Well, as a professional photo editor, you know that if the original b+w photo captures an image with say, a 50% grey value, you don't know if the original color was bright red, or closer to that 50% gray. Bright red has a much higher chroma va…

Thanks. That's a perspective that didn't really dawn on me until your comment. I guess in some ways, the muted colors could be seen less as the colorist's stylistic choice than an appeal to "safe" representation of chroma values that don't offer information about vibrancy.

I also appreciate the effort that went into some of those things. Two of my favorite documentary series are the world wars in color (one series for each).

When they were first aired, there was a special episode with the director and artists who did the work. The amount of research they put into it, the amount of effort they out into doing the work, and their attempts to be faithful to the history really, really impressed me.

It's able to be an art, in and of itself. It's also able to be undertaken as a scholarly work. Additionally, the original uncolorized work is still available. It's an additive process and isn't destructive.

I'm not sure why you'd be agitated, but I don't have your perspective. I'd better understand, I think, if it meant the destruction of the original work.

Re: Colorizing black and white photos with deep learning

#47

Post by contingencies »

vwcx wrote: post #22

As a professional photo editor and historian, colorized photos really agitate me. I'm all for the creation of new ways to get people to engage with historical primary documentation, but the nuance that these colorizations are interpretations gets lost immediately. Do an image search for "D-Day in color" and try to tell me which results are original color negatives and which are colorizations made by teenagers. I'm al…

As a professional photo editor and historian, colorized photos really agitate me.

As a photographer, collector and enthusiast of vintage prints and photos and amateur historian, I deeply appreciate the aesthetic of colorized photos and understand the motivation to reproduce and master it. There is more to art than truth.

The artist is not the transcriber of the world, he is its rival. - L'Intemporel (Third volume of 'The Metamorphosis of the Gods'), André Malraux (1957)

Re: Colorizing black and white photos with deep learning

#48

Post by robotosan »

mc32 wrote: post #45
vwcx wrote: post #22

As a professional photo editor and historian, colorized photos really agitate me. I'm all for the creation of new ways to get people to engage with historical primary documentation, but the nuance that these colorizations are interpretations gets lost immediately. Do an image search for "D-Day in color" and try to tell me which results are original color negatives and which are colorizations made by teenagers. I'm al…

I think there was a cable TV channel a longtime ago which might have been a Turner property --they would get rights to some classic B&W movie and colorize it --I'm sure the tech used back then was somewhat primitive but the results were horrific --but of course "Color!"

I remember watching some of them! Turner Classic Movies was the culprit and they were dreadful.

I suppose the technique has evolved exponentially since then.

Re: Colorizing black and white photos with deep learning

#49

Post by aglavine »

WalterBright wrote: post #33
vwcx wrote: post #22

As a professional photo editor and historian, colorized photos really agitate me. I'm all for the creation of new ways to get people to engage with historical primary documentation, but the nuance that these colorizations are interpretations gets lost immediately. Do an image search for "D-Day in color" and try to tell me which results are original color negatives and which are colorizations made by teenagers. I'm al…

I like colorized historical photos. It brings them to life in a remarkable way. I'd like to see the old B+W movies colorized (the Ted Turner ones don't count, as they were done very poorly). Sure, the colors will never be exact, because we don't know what the original colors were. But that doesn't matter in any material way.

The 'exact' concept is wrong. Any picture depends on lighting, camera used, filters, lens, etc.

I don't mind colorized photos. Yet for some of them that were made thinking in a b/w result (For example, the 'With The Beatles' album cover) colorizing means the lost of those stylistic choices.

Re: Colorizing black and white photos with deep learning

#50

Post by mc32 »

robotosan wrote: post #48
mc32 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there was a cable TV channel a longtime ago which might have been a Turner property --they would get rights to some classic B&W movie and colorize it --I'm sure the tech used back then was somewhat primitive but the results were horrific --but of course "Color!"

I remember watching some of them! Turner Classic Movies was the culprit and they were dreadful. I suppose the technique has evolved exponentially since then.

Aw, man, yep, that was it. I vaguely recall the awful tinge of their movies. Looks like many actors, directors who were in some of the victimized movies were none too happy about the colorization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKtRvBZx28c
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