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Colour from B&W

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  • 20-08-2010 12:50pm
    #1
    paddyland
    Closed Accounts Posts: 932 ✭✭✭


    Hi, I wonder is it at all possible to estimate colours from black and white photographs? Is there anything in the hue that gives a clue, or is it purely guess work?

    I have a few old B&W photos, and I'd love to know what colours were there.


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    #2
    red_ice
    Registered Users Posts: 4,946 ✭✭✭red_ice


    im interested in this too.

    There was a documentary on discovery channel or something where they managed to pull colour from black and white world war 2 footage.(might have been this)

    Is it possible?


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    #3
    Noodleworm
    Registered Users Posts: 717 ✭✭✭Noodleworm


    seems very unlikely with normal commercial software. especially if its a scan, the only information the computer gets is the shades of greys, you can re-colour manually but I don't really know if you can get that kind of info.

    maybe theres a way of telling what colours become what shades of grey?


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    #4
    5uspect
    Moderators, Arts Moderators Posts: 10,518 Mod ✭✭✭✭5uspect


    Greyscale is essentially an average of the RGB values.

    So you have no idea if the grey shade you see is red, blue or green.

    Any shade in the first column could correspond to any colour in the RGB columns.

    attachment.php?attachmentid=124998&stc=1&d=1282409678

    You may be able to reduce your data somewhat depending on the context.
    A person's face probably only has certain colours and hence you can do come kind of linear combination of the weighted components.


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    #5
    Dublin_Gunner
    Registered Users Posts: 7,692 ✭✭✭Dublin_Gunner


    hmm - you ever see those recoloured WWII films, like Discovery / History showed a while ago?

    I wonder if they used some sort of digital technique for recolouring, or were they done by hand? (digitally obviously)


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    #6
    5uspect
    Moderators, Arts Moderators Posts: 10,518 Mod ✭✭✭✭5uspect


    Were they recoloured or origionally shot in colour and just cleaned up?


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    #7
    Dublin_Gunner
    Registered Users Posts: 7,692 ✭✭✭Dublin_Gunner


    5uspect wrote: »
    Were they recoloured or origionally shot in colour and just cleaned up?


    AFAIK original B&W and digitally recoloured, at least some / a lot of it.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_colorization


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    #8
    5uspect
    Moderators, Arts Moderators Posts: 10,518 Mod ✭✭✭✭5uspect


    Dublin_Gunner wrote: »
    AFAIK original B&W and digitally recoloured, at least some / a lot of it.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_colorization

    Cool. Interesting reading.


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    #9
    red_ice
    Registered Users Posts: 4,946 ✭✭✭red_ice


    Dublin_Gunner wrote: »
    hmm - you ever see those recoloured WWII films, like Discovery / History showed a while ago?

    I wonder if they used some sort of digital technique for recolouring, or were they done by hand? (digitally obviously)

    you mean like the link i posed right after the OP?


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    #10
    Dublin_Gunner
    Registered Users Posts: 7,692 ✭✭✭Dublin_Gunner


    red_ice wrote: »
    you mean like the link i posed right after the OP?


    Lovely youtube vid, not much help though as it doesn't explain how its done - which is what we were getting at.

    You can embed youtube vids in your post btw.


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