beatlegdb.com

Interesting and looks good

Not awful but not great either.

I really think the technology should be used to ENHANCE black & white footage not replace it.

The algorithms STILL can't marry the underlying gray values with the arbitrary color values and blend them realistically so consequently they always end up just looking crayoned or art-penciled over and not anything like real color footage. Anyone who studied this knows that B&W and color film records grey values entirely differently. De-saturating color footage in no way approximates real B&W footage. They look totally different.

This seems to be an obnoxious Youtube trend of "restoring" old footage by applying these still primitive algorithms. I don't mind 30fps upscaling and damage removal but I hate colorization of historical footage. Maybe in a few years the technology will be better.

Just my opinion.

I enjoyed it, thanks. This technology will never be perfect in the sense that often there's no way of knowing what colours or shades of colours things actually were but I don't think it will be long before the results look perfect.

I'm all for it, the black and white photography as being an artistic expression/intention of the creator is 100% valid but ONLY when it was truly intended to be black and white. Nine times out of 10 it was just black and white because that's all that was available and/or it was cheaper.

Engonoceras wrote: ↑Sun Apr 23, 2023 4:05 pm Not awful but not great either.

I really think the technology should be used to ENHANCE black & white footage not replace it.

The algorithms STILL can't marry the underlying gray values with the arbitrary color values and blend them realistically so consequently they always end up just looking crayoned or art-penciled over and not anything like real color footage. Anyone who studied this knows that B&W and color film records grey values entirely differently. De-saturating color footage in no way approximates real B&W footage. They look totally different.

This seems to be an obnoxious Youtube trend of "restoring" old footage by applying these still primitive algorithms. I don't mind 30fps upscaling and damage removal but I hate colorization of historical footage. Maybe in a few years the technology will be better.

Just my opinion.

Yes you're right, there is no correlation between brightness levels and colours - an eroneous assumption many people make. So there's no way for these algorithms to determine colours other than to look for familiar things that are usually the same colour: sky, trees, grass etc. Some things can be inferred through machine learning eg: skin colour. It may also be able to recognise species of flora and fauna and get an accurate colour. Most other things though like clothing, cars and a million other objects can only be guessed at. That's why if you put one of your old photos into a colorizer, it will get the surroundings sort of the right colour but the clothes 90% of the time will be wrong.

Because there is no connection between luma and chroma, these colorizers have reached the limit of their sophistication. To work perfectly they would have to scan every object that has ever existed.

Choking Smoker wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 6:34 am I'm all for it, the black and white photography as being an artistic expression/intention of the creator is 100% valid but ONLY when it was truly intended to be black and white. Nine times out of 10 it was just black and white because that's all that was available and/or it was cheaper.

They would however choose the colours to create the best looking image in monochrome. If you look at colour photos of black and white productions then the colours on set are often very odd. The most obvious example I can think of is blood: if you use red fake blood then in black and white it comes out looking like very light grey, so they used to use black fake blood because this would look on screen like what people imagine blood would look like in B&W. There's a definite art to creating a good black and white image, and you'll find that if you compare an old B&W movie and a colour movie with the colour turned off then the former will look a lot better.

Lord Reith wrote: ↑Wed Apr 26, 2023 9:07 am

Choking Smoker wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 6:34 am I'm all for it, the black and white photography as being an artistic expression/intention of the creator is 100% valid but ONLY when it was truly intended to be black and white. Nine times out of 10 it was just black and white because that's all that was available and/or it was cheaper.

They would however choose the colours to create the best looking image in monochrome. If you look at colour photos of black and white productions then the colours on set are often very odd. The most obvious example I can think of is blood: if you use red fake blood then in black and white it comes out looking like very light grey, so they used to use black fake blood because this would look on screen like what people imagine blood would look like in B&W. There's a definite art to creating a good black and white image, and you'll find that if you compare an old B&W movie and a colour movie with the colour turned off then the former will look a lot better.

Here's a short article with a perfect example ---

https://www.boredpanda.com/the-addams-f ... gn=organic

Lord Reith wrote: ↑Wed Apr 26, 2023 9:01 am Because there is no connection between luma and chroma, these colorizers have reached the limit of their sophistication. To work perfectly they would have to scan every object that has ever existed.

Probably not too far off.

Just in time too. It will be good to have our existence digitized before we finish poisoning ourselves.

I don't like most colorization I've seen and at times it is so distracting that I lose sight of the actual content.
On the other hand I don't understand objections to it's being done.

It's kind of like me singing in the shower.
I might think it's great but my wife might think I'm ruining the song.
But I didn't eliminate the original recording from existence, and she can always go into another room.

I do appreciate the attempts and the incremental improvements, and like many technology based ideas,
advancements will continue.

The best hand colorization I've ever seen is Casablanca, and that was done 30 years ago. Whoever did it went to extraordinary trouble. Usually in those movies they would just colour the actors and everything behind them would be a wash. But in that one they literally hand coloured every insignifant object on the set. It is quite extraordinary.

I Dream Of Jeannie Season 1 is pretty good too. When the money's there, the results can be surprising. Unfortunately I think AI colorization has rung the death knell for hand colorizing.

Lord Reith wrote: ↑Thu Apr 27, 2023 12:04 am The best hand colorization I've ever seen is Casablanca, and that was done 30 years ago. Whoever did it went to extraordinary trouble. Usually in those movies they would just colour the actors and everything behind them would be a wash. But in that one they literally hand coloured every insignifant object on the set. It is quite extraordinary.

Best studio movie ever made and one of my top 3--never knew it went through colorization! (Maybe I did and blocked it out.)