"Converting" black and white photos to colour

[yjs]

What is the best way to do this? It's possible to get quite staggering results with Photoshop; haven't tried this yet with Xara.

[Boy]

Yes, I also got some great results using Photoshop. It's a while ago, though, so I cannot really remember how I did it or what tools I used in PS. Anyway, you can color B&W pictures in XDP using the Shape Painter Tool. Create a layer above the B&W image, adjust the brush settings to your liking (including feathering), select the color you want and paint away. After the first stroke, go to the Transparency Tool and adjust the settings so that the color blends in with the image the way you want it to and continue to paint. The new strokes will have the same transparency setting applied. It's sometimes a bit finicky so you will have to give it some time.

Perhaps others here have some more pointers for you.

[yjs]

Yes, I also got some great results using Photoshop. It's a while ago, though, so I cannot really remember how I did it or what tools I used in PS. Anyway, you can color B&W pictures in XDP using the Shape Painter Tool. Create a layer above the B&W image, adjust the brush settings to your liking (including feathering), select the color you want and paint away. After the first stroke, go to the Transparency Tool and adjust the settings so that the color blends in with the image the way you want it to and continue to paint. The new strokes will have the same transparency setting applied. It's sometimes a bit finicky so you will have to give it some time.

Perhaps others here have some more pointers for you.

Thanks, I thought something like this might be how Xara handles it, but I'd hoped there might be something simpler. I've been looking at some online 'instant' colouring sites such as http://demos.algorithmia.com/colorize-photos/ and wondered if Xara has any such 'intelligent' capabilities.

Also a few years ago, a photographer told me that at that time, any colouring of old photos was essentially guesswork (i.e. there's no way of telling if someone's eyes or a child's toy were actually brown or blue)... but he believed that in the near future, it would be possible to be much more certain about the original colour. Does anyone know where things stand on this?

Thanks
Yaffa

[Boy]

I've been looking at some online 'instant' colouring sites such as http://demos.algorithmia.com/colorize-photos/ and wondered if Xara has any such 'intelligent' capabilities.

You want 'magic' colorization and, as of yet, there is no such thing. I tried the site you linked to and tried the photo with the cows. The result shows the cows completely brown, including their noses, their ear tags and all highlights. Not very realistic. The picture they show is so small that it's hard to examine further but I wasn't happy with the result.

By the way, you can also use Xara's Effect Painter in the Photo Tool fly-out. It has many settings that can help you achieve the effect that you're after. That is, if you're willing to put in the effort.

[handrawn]

if we are talking about old film photographs then basically they only have one colour which is black - it varies in saturation from 100% to zero and the lower the saturation the more of the white paper you see; but there is only the one colour - at least that is my understanding [not a photographer]

on that basis I see no way to deduce original colouration; I also don't see a meaningful way of converting automatically, there are no points of reference for an automatic process, other than level of saturation

is the photoshop process a relatively new one - I'm not familiar with it and it sounds interesting...

[yjs]

You want 'magic' colorization and, as of yet, there is no such thing. I tried the site you linked to and tried the photo with the cows. The result shows the cows completely brown, including their noses, their ear tags and all highlights. Not very realistic. The picture they show is so small that it's hard to examine further but I wasn't happy with the result.

By the way, you can also use Xara's Effect Painter in the Photo Tool fly-out. It has many settings that can help you achieve the effect that you're after. That is, if you're willing to put in the effort.

Thanks - I agree that the site I linked to isn't great - haven't yet looked closely at other sites or software. Obviously yes, I'd love to see a 'magic' colourisation solution but can understand that this doesn't yet exist. So I'm checking out the options for:

a) Colourisation that LOOKS authentic.

b) Colourisation that IS authentic (reflecting the actual 'hidden' colours of the original)

In both cases I'm trying to understand what's available at different levels of expertise/cost/time, and what Xara P and G (with/without Pro) offers. Then I can decide what (if anything) to offer to clients.

BTW, I just watched a few brief colourised Youtube videos from the last two centuries and - wow, they really give a completely different perspective on history.

Yaffa

[handrawn]

but is it an accurate perspective?

a word on the subject from a true expert

[yjs]

if we are talking about old film photographs then basically they only have one colour which is black - it varies in saturation from 100% to zero and the lower the saturation the more of the white paper you see; but there is only the one colour - at least that is my understanding [not a photographer]

on that basis I see no way to deduce original colouration; I also don't see a meaningful way of converting automatically, there are no points of reference for an automatic process, other than level of saturation

is the photoshop process a relatively new one - I'm not familiar with it and it sounds interesting...

I'm a novice when it comes to colour - but I thought that if, say, an element in a black and white photo must actually be red (e.g. a telephone booth) and another element must be green (e.g. blade of grass).. and the light is clearly shining from a particular angle... then you could somehow work out that the flowers must be orange rather than purple??

Love the cartoon!

[handrawn]

in a city not far from me, telephone booths [should there be any left] are cream, an account of the city fathers at the early part of the last century retaining local control of their phone system; and it is still independent from BT although now sold off to a private company

the artist in me says to call grass 'green' is one hell of a simplification

the colour of an object is a function of what wavelengths it absorbs and what wavelengths it reflects back; and light is reflected onto that object from all sorts of angles and from all sorts of other objects that have absorbed/reflected light in their own ways - and really that's just a start - does this sound complicated... it is

I suppose a photo taken under tightly controlled studio conditions might be guessable up to a point - but if you look closely at grass, or a daffodil say, or whatever... you can see that nature really rarely if ever 'paints' things in solid colour, so it isn't just different objects in the equation, but different parts of each object too that all make up the tonal blend... the variables are immense

[Acorn]

It was a shock for me when Doctor Who went to colour as the TARDIS was blue. Our police boxes are still red.

As to colourising B&W - just take three shots with red, blue and green filters, ensure their registration and everything's hunky dory - Technicolor.

Acorn