On one of my visits to my hometown, I converted a bunch of old family album pictures into digital prints. It was on my TODO list for quite some time. It is not just ease of access, but the risk of misplacing and losing out on all those priceless memories. We have a good set of photo albums lying in the family closet, and I captured some selective photos in digital form. A good majority of them were good old B&W photos. I remember my dad having an AGFA camera that only had B&W sensor capability. Later I remember him upgrading to a Kodak color camera, which we put to way better use.
The downside of B&W photographs is that they are far from representing reality. You seem to be always curious about what would have been the color of the dress you wore in that photograph, or what was the shade of that study table top. Neither the lens was that advanced at that time (at least for the camera we owned) to provide some aesthetically sharp B&W image.
Adobe Photoshop CC has a compelling set of Neural Filters with a bunch of AI capabilities. One of the cool features is the Colorize filter for the colorization of black and white photographs.
Adobe Photoshop CC has a compelling set of Neural Filters with a bunch of AI capabilities. One of the cool features is the Colorize filter for the colorization of black and white photographs.
It provides both manual single-click mode to colorize the B&W picture, as well as options to do some customization on the hue and saturation. The different profile settings also give subtle differences in the picture output. It is amazing how much AI technologies have evolved in various spheres, and Imaging Science is no exception. The transformations using these Neural filters were highly realistic, not overdoing the colors or the tones, and just about right to make you believe.
Of all the pictures I experimented with, I found the one below astonishing. The different color grades of the grass, trees, mud and the rest of the surroundings came out fabulous!
I also experimented a bit with photographs with mono-color grading (I do not recollect how those were clicked in the first place!), and the results were equally promising.
I plan to try out some of the manual settings and maybe even create multiple versions of pictures. Overall, a great feature to sprinkle color into some old memories, and share ‘n surprise your family!