Colorize BW with deep learning

Note how it gets Weston's cabbage red.

 

 

 

http://edward-weston.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Cabbage-Leaf-1931-39V.jpg

https://a.1stdibscdn.com/archivesE/upload/a_115/1485891672037/johnny_edward_weston_1944_weston_gallery_carmel_california_l.jpg

http://edward-weston.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Pepper-1930-30P.jpg

http://edward-weston.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Nahui-Olin-1923-16PO.jpg

If I start with one of my color photos and convert it to black and white and then use the Colorize BW algorithm, I can compare it to what it should look like.

Here is the original image

 

And here is the converted from black and white image. Not terrible, but not exactly realistic either. I suppose that you could use the algorithm for "artistic interpretation". At least, I think that, this image converts better than Weston's pepper which ends up looking very peculiar.

Edited July 6, 2017 by Glenn McCreery

I actually like the Weston's pepper with the magentas and greens. I think individual mileage may vary with this app. I am not interested in making the app create realistic colors. I am actually more motivated to confuse the app into doing something crazy, like choosing colors that make me jump off my seat.

The url got hidden, demos.algorithmia.com - probably it could be much improved with effort, and I assume there is much better proprietary stuff used for colorizing moves.

Here is another example of converting a color image, in this case a backlit plant (yellow salsify), to black and white, and then back to color. The algorithm "knows" that the sky is blue and that plant stems are green, except when it decides that parts of the stems are blue. The yellow is unrealistic, and the saturation is overdone.

 

Perhaps iterating back and forth from color to black and white and back to color a number of times would give Supriyo his crazy colors?

 

Since the algorithm is trained by comparing a huge number of color images with their black and white conversions, the trick to fooling it might be to find a scene where the colors could potentially be a wide variety, say a house with window frames and doors painted a variety of colors.

Edited July 6, 2017 by Glenn McCreery

I must have missed a turn. On modern cameras, a flick of the switch, or a quick menu reset will give me color or monochrome, Going further, on my Nikons, I can convert in camera, or alternatively, in Photoshop. I am probably a "likely" customer in theory, since I often set my cameras on Monochrome and shoot JPEG. Just one problem, when I shoot monochrome, that is what I wanted -- same for color. As to old scanned films, the same is true - I picked the film for my intent. I suppose if I were in business..but then I'd shoot RAW.

I still don't understand why Ted Turner colorized all those old great black and white movies. And colorizing Weston . . . ???!!!

 

Color me a skeptic! ;-)

Done! :-)

colouring in black and white! absolutely ghastly. i love it. Edited July 6, 2017 by Norman 202

As a demo for deep learning systems, it's a quite nice idea, and I'm reasonably impressed. It's not super accurate and having tried a few photos with less conventional subjects/lighting, I found it can be tricked quite easily, but that's to be expected. Technologically - quite wow, but the tendency towards rather oversaturated colours do show its dataset is made up from very conventional popular photos ;-) Still, to attempt to colorise scanned old family photos and such - nice to play around with.

 

But for me personally, I shoot B&W because I want B&W, so it's not something I'll quickly use.

I still don't understand why Ted Turner colorized all those old great black and white movies. And colorizing Weston . . . ???!!!

 

Color me a skeptic! ;-)

 

Sometimes, I've had the urge to add some selective color to a b&w image. In general, I agree with Wouter's conclusion. As for colorizing a classic b&w film, shame on Ted Turner!

I could see it being nice for really old photos. I wouldn't mind seeing color versions of pictures of my family from the 30's/40's/50's and earlier. Much later than that then B&W was a deliberate choice.

Agree about the horror of colorizing the Hollywood classics, and as for those "WW1 or WW2 in color" monstrosities: words fail me.

Might be fun to play with in combination with old kodachrome which you can really only process as B&W now.

 

I'm also curious as to what it does in a situation where the appropriate color could really be anything. I might try it on some B&W pictures I took during one of my son's football games last year. Their jerseys are grey.

So far the learning is not very deep. ;)

 

I played with it a little and other than grass, sky, water, trees and other common features, it can't seem to do very much. In fact it got the trees wrong anyway since the picture was from the Fall.

 

It also doesn't seem to know where the water ends and beach starts in the picture below.

 

 

It's interesting that it colored part of the rock green. Maybe there was some vegetation there, I honestly don't remember.

Edited July 7, 2017 by tomspielman

It's kind of at a loss with what to do with people and colors will bleed into places they don't belong if there's not a hard edge. The concrete below demonstrates some of the problems. Concrete can be any number of shades of grey to more of a wheat color. It tried everything in this picture.

 

Maybe these are only "problems" if they are looked at as such. They are problems only in the sense of not accurately rendering something. But, with imagination, they can become contemporary digital photographic possibilities.

 

Instead of looking for the more mundane reproductive potential here, why not see it as a modern-day counterpart of what creative photographers did with solarization, bleaching negatives, etc., none of which were bound by . . . how well does it match reality?