Coloring; Colorizing; Colorization

[burns334]

When I was a kid one of my friends mom use to color b&w's at home, all portraits as I remember. She used a q-tip and I thought she did a great job but I was 13 yrs old

[footfootfoot]

RE: coloring B&W photos

@ GRavdigr, colors reproduce differently in black and white. For example, red and blue are the same tone of gray in a black and white photo. Generally speaking, the more color contrast in the original, the less b&w tonal contrast. Rule of thumb: if it looks AMAZING in color, it will look like shit in b&w.

The other limiting factor is that the underlying tones of the color are tones of gray, making all the colors muddy by default. In a true color photo there might be some muddy colors but colors in shadow don't have gray added to them, they are different colors, or shades of a color, so you end up with colors that are less intense in a colorized photo.

The best candidate for a colorized photo is one that is lighter, and has flatter contrast.

Here is a rare example of Ansel Adams's color photography (good thing he kept his day job) and a similar view of the same subject by a photographer paying homage to AA. The B&W version of AA's photo was only 340 px so I didn't bother with it.

You may now return to your heretical, culturally criminal colorizing.

[Clodfobble]

There is great artistic merit in black and white, no doubt, especially if the photographer chose it during a time when color was available. Those guys know what they were doing.

But what if it's a standard news or candid shot that would have looked amazing in color, but now looks shit in black and white? For me, the thing I like is the historical photos get surprisingly humanized for me with color. I would never have realized it until I saw it differently, but the black and white (apparently) lends it a sense of "not really us." That's often the purposeful effect of an artistic photographer, but it can also lend a sense of "not really relevant" to today, which is decidedly not the point of a documentary news photographer.

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

..For me, the thing I like is the historical photos get surprisingly humanized for me with color. I would never have realized it until I saw it differently, but the black and white (apparently) lends it a sense of "not really us." That's often the purposeful effect of an artistic photographer, but it can also lend a sense of "not really relevant" to today, which is decidedly not the point of a documentary news photographer.

Most people assume that because 99.99% of the photos they have seen of WW II are B&W, that there was no color film at the time. In fact there was and it was a conscious decision not to use color film when reporting on the war or documenting it for the very reasons you state.

People back home saw the war through an extra layer of abstraction by viewing it in black and white. Allowing them to see color images would have made the ghastly-ness more real and evident.

Another, more practical, reason is that color film was still relatively rare and expensive. It was used by intelligence though as it held more information than b&w.

There is an article about this topic somewhere and a number of youtube videos of combat footage filmed in color.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Color makes WW II refugees more human...



Bigots more threatening...



Scientists we've only read about more real...



The past more current...



History more real...

[glatt]

Interesting that in the car crash one, the black guy and white guy are standing right next to each other as if they are friends. I know the picture is slightly posed, but I would think it would be unusual, especially in that time, for the two to be standing side by side. I wouldn't have noticed it as much in black and white.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I think it's a black guy and a light guy.
But it could be a black guy and his boss.

[glatt]

Are they historically accurate?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Of course, but what difference does it make looking at old cars?

[glatt]

It's neat to know if the colors were the actual colors of the cars at the cars at the time.