Before and After Colorization - Depression Era Children

[ALB68]

From the Library of Congress with no use restrictions. Tell me what you think.

 

[Paul]

What you are doing is admirable, but my only real concern is with the depth of your colours.
For me everything needs knocking back and making subtle, and with varying shades especially to clothing and facial tones.
You will get better we all will.
Another pointer with the original image quality, if it is poor or not as good as it could be, don't spend to much trying to get in clean.
Keep it up mate.

 

[ALB68]

Thanks for the reply Paul. I am having to learn the use of colors as I have never worked with them in depth. I have learned a lot since I got into making this effort. I don't know how the skin color is coming across but it is technically correct on my machine. I invested in a monitor calibration device a Spyder Pro4 I think it is called and it should be here on Monday. I'll keep that in mind on the color depth.

What you are doing is admirable, but my only real concern is with the depth of your colours.
For me everything needs knocking back and making subtle, and with varying shades especially to clothing and facial tones.
You will get better we all will.
Another pointer with the original image quality, if it is poor or not as good as it could be, don't spend to much trying to get in clean.
Keep it up mate.

 

[Hoogle]

the way I do my recolouring is not the same as everyone else probably but works for me.

create a new layer above the image and paint in 1 element ie skin then set that blending mode of the layer to colour or soft light

add a hue saturation adjustment layer (adjustment layer version is better as you can tweak it easily later on) and adjust the tone saturation and color to it and clip it to the layer below.

repeat this til whole picture is coloured and then apply overall effects like levels contrast etc

 

[Tom Mann]

Hi ALB -

I mentioned this several colorization threads ago, but, IMHO, it bears repeating: Fix tonality problems before you attempt colorization. I find it vastly easier to colorize a low contrast image than a high contrast, noisy image. The original B&W image in this thread has major tonality problems arising from both these causes, with some highlights that are almost completely blown.

To prepare for colorization, I first worked on fixing these problems and produced the B&W image that is attached below. Open two browser windows and compare it side-by-side with the very harsh original. I probably over-did the smoothing and lowering of contrast, but I wanted the direction I was going to be obvious.

Next, I colorized it using a combination of a gradient map for the skin tones, plus fairly conventional selective colorization / color tweaking, much like the process Hoogle mentioned in this thread, and I mentioned in an earlier thread.

The result is the 2nd image attached below. It's full of flaws (eg, lousy masking, I'm not happy with the overly red-orange homogenous skin because I didn't spend enough time refining my color gradient map, halos, a mottled-light look from my attempt to tame the blown highlights and contrast in the original B&W, the overly smooth wood background, etc.), but hopefully it clearly illustrates the general concept.

Instead of moving on to another image, why don't you try colorizing my softer B&W version and see if you find it any easier than starting with the high contrast, noisy version.

Best regards,

Tom M

 

[Tom Mann]

BTW, ALB, I forgot to mention in my previous post that in some ways, I like your colorizing more than mine. Specifically, yours looks much more "authentic" than mine, ie, like it was done the traditional way with oils and tints applied by brush to the print, e.g., a bit like http://www.firstbaptistbloomfield.org/images/bel-wash09.jpg.

In case you are interested, there are some really nice examples of modern colorization here:
http://www.amusingplanet.com/2012/05/famous-black-and-white-photos-restored.html .

And, a nice discussion of some of the traditional hand coloring methods here:
http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/articles-interest/147257-introduction-hand-coloring.html

HTH,

Tom M

 

[ALB68]

Tom,
WOW! I am dumbfounded by the way this looks. Thanks again for your help. Pressing on here, I'll check out the suggested sites.
Larry

 

[ALB68]

Very cool! Thanks for posting these links.

BTW, ALB, I forgot to mention in my previous post that in some ways, I like your colorizing more than mine. Specifically, yours looks much more "authentic" than mine, ie, like it was done the traditional way with oils and tints applied by brush to the print, e.g., a bit like http://www.firstbaptistbloomfield.org/images/bel-wash09.jpg.

In case you are interested, there are some really nice examples of modern colorization here:
http://www.amusingplanet.com/2012/05/famous-black-and-white-photos-restored.html .

And, a nice discussion of some of the traditional hand coloring methods here:
http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/articles-interest/147257-introduction-hand-coloring.html

HTH,

Tom M

 

[ALB68]

I was attempting to keep the "grundgy" look. My thought is that I should attempt to keep the overall mood of the photograph intact. The Great Depression was a terrible thing and many people suffered.

BTW, ALB, I forgot to mention in my previous post that in some ways, I like your colorizing more than mine. Specifically, yours looks much more "authentic" than mine, ie, like it was done the traditional way with oils and tints applied by brush to the print, e.g., a bit like http://www.firstbaptistbloomfield.org/images/bel-wash09.jpg.

In case you are interested, there are some really nice examples of modern colorization here:
http://www.amusingplanet.com/2012/05/famous-black-and-white-photos-restored.html .

And, a nice discussion of some of the traditional hand coloring methods here:
http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/articles-interest/147257-introduction-hand-coloring.html

HTH,

Tom M

 

[Inkz]

Try retouching using the curve adjustment layers

 

[Tom Mann]

I was attempting to keep the "grundgy" look. My thought is that I should attempt to keep the overall mood of the photograph intact. The Great Depression was a terrible thing and many people suffered.

Yes, it was a terrible, terrible time.

Excepting major make-work projects like the WPA, almost certainly, there were fewer photos taken by and of ordinary people during the great depression, but I wonder if there were proportionally more or fewer that were hand-colored. There was vastly less disposable income for most people, but probably photographers / artists would offer hand-coloring services very inexpensively, just to bring in some sort of work. If anyone knows the history of hand-coloring, especially during this period, it would be interesting to hear.

That being said, it always desirable for photographers to be able to switch back and forth, at will, between methods that produce realistic / modern colorization effects, and techniques to simulate traditional hand-coloring.

Best regards,

Tom M

 

[ALB68]

Not too many folks around that have first hand knowledge of actual conditions then. My brother was born in 1933. My mother had to have a caeserian and the doctor charged $50.00. She said that it might as well have been a million as she had no idea where they were EVER going to get $50.00. Many of the members on here have no concept of such a thing. Let us hope that nothing like that befalls us again as in Greece right now where people are burning their furniture for fuel.

Back to PS. I did a new version of this. Used some different methodology and blending modes. This definitely has a different look which I like better than my original, but still not as good as yours Tom.