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Converting B&W to colour


JZ
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Going through some very old family photo's, I pondered on what they would be like in colour. So off I went hunting down a program that would do it automatically. I came across one called PixBim ColorSurprise. Not yet convinced enough to pay $40 for the full version. Here are a few of the trials.

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The above pictures are around Ophir, Colorado.

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Dunkerton Colliery Halt

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Grimstone.

Fairly happy with the above pictures, but when I converted some I took to black and white, then used the software to convert back to colour, the results were, to say the least, disappointing.

Has anyone any experience of this, or other software that does this?

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Interesting. I can see it being a very useful application for general scenic photos, but not sure how accurately it would cope with all the different colour schemes of loco's and rolling stock? 

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Just now, iands said:

Interesting. I can see it being a very useful application for general scenic photos, but not sure how accurately it would cope with all the different colour schemes of loco's and rolling stock? 

I tried one of a Hymek at Bradford-on-Avon. It came out red. Presumably the dirt on the loco caused it.

BoA3_colorSAI_result.jpg.47cc5f3a3dadd39b6e48e9fb3ab73412.jpg

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2 minutes ago, JZ said:

I tried one of a Hymek at Bradford-on-Avon. It came out red. Presumably the dirt on the loco caused it.

BoA3_colorSAI_result.jpg.47cc5f3a3dadd39b6e48e9fb3ab73412.jpg

Yet the signal arm doesn't come out red & white. As I say, an interesting concept, but I think it would have limited application for converting B&W railway photos to colour. 

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I am reminded of those 'converters' that someone used to sell in Exchange & Mart, designed to make old B&W TVs look like the (then new) Colour sets, basically they had a blue tinge at the top and green tinge at the bottom.

 

Any software to automatically convert B&W photos must either be a 'state of the art' artificial intelligence that can work out what the subject is and what colour it should be OR makes inspired guesses, the results are "colour", but not always the right colours.  Imagine a locomotive like "Flying Scotsman" that has been in several colours over the years, unless the software can know the date of the photo how can it get things right.

 

jch

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9 minutes ago, John Harris said:

 

 

Any software to automatically convert B&W photos must either be a 'state of the art' artificial intelligence that can work out what the subject is and what colour it should be OR makes inspired guesses, the results are "colour", but not always the right colours.  Imagine a locomotive like "Flying Scotsman" that has been in several colours over the years, unless the software can know the date of the photo how can it get things right.

 

jch

Played around with a few others since my initial post and, in general, diesels  tend to come out red. Could be the developer is a fan of the LMS.

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Heres one…

 

Black and white..

CEBBA903-1968-4E65-8DAA-5C5187DFA18D.jpeg.5150a623e960a381dce0c8000b76f04a.jpeg

 

converted…to colour

 

 

D4777CD2-642B-472B-A73A-2066FCE631DF.jpeg.b0259e25f6bbd10204f308183790325f.jpeg

 

heres the original colour image…

 

9B682F9B-0A5D-4F24-B094-4A8384E8C875.jpeg.f9d19e77980951235ba91d857c172e5d.jpeg

 

Good technology, but Ive found unless theres lots of grass, bare wood or obvious black / whites, theres still some way to go yet.

 

What would enhance this algorithm would be colour reference material based on subjects, for instance if I could load a reference colour image and propose colour gradients from that reference image to use in the converted image.

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I suspect you lose too much texture converting from colour to B&W, so it can't pick up the necessary to reconvert to colour (not really sure why you want to do that, anyway).

 

Interesting how it picks up the rust on the loco and boxcars on the pics above. The conversion of Dunkerton Colliery Halt also looks pretty good to me.

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