tips for colorising B&W photos?

[Deleted member 95075]

Hallo

I was wondering if anybody here has experience of colorising old black & white photographs? So far I've been using AI colorisers found on the web, which are OK but often not that accurate. Can anyone recommend a fairly easy way of colorising photos, or are there any programmes that you can recommend?

I've tried using fairly basic GIMP (2.10.18 I think) and following YouTube instructions, but am struggling, tbh.

Thanks!

 

[Sky]

How about Photoshop?: https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/photoshop-elements/using/colorize-photo.html

 

[Deleted member 95075]

Thanks, looks like they do a free trial, might be worth a go.

 

[4wd]

The automated one in photoshop is rarely as good as this online one IMO

Colorize | Colorize Black & White Old Photos Online Free

Colorize old photos online with ImageColorizer, the best AI photo colorizer tool. Add vivid, lifelike colors to your black-and-white photos instantly. No sign-up required.

imagecolorizer.com

 

[Deleted member 95075]

Colorize is one of the best ones I've found so far but still not great. I'll try and upload an image here which was done on imagelolorizer.com. It came out OK but it hasn't made the London bus a very convincing colour, nor the lorry, IMO and the clothes look a bit weird. This was taken from a 1946 b/w image

 

[4wd]

It does best with more simple scenes, you can't expect it to *know* what colour a bus should be but at least it is reddish.
Something like a building with green fields/trees and blue sky often work really well and skin tones are often not bad at all e.g. Your example.

 

[lugworm]

Another from Colorize. If anybody is interested in 60s music history, this is Jim King, Harry Ovenall, and Johnny (Charlie) Whitney...the Farinas, from Leicester, where this photo was taken (In Charlies garden). They changed the name a short while later to become Family !