Black & White transferred to Colour.

I've just found a website that can digitally change old black & white photos into colour. So I e-mailed them one of my Dad's photos he took of a Black 5 no.45142 at Eastbourne shed in the Summer of 1964 to see if the colour transfer would be any good. The result was this - original B/W photo http://david422.fotopic.net/p65748889.html and digital colour transfer http://david422.fotopic.net/p67343265.html

Whilst it's not 100% perfect my Dad was absolutely chuffed with the conversion and thought the colour brought the image to life. I guess this is probably about as good as current technology will allow. Here is the website if anyone else is interested. http://www.black2colour.com/gallery.htm

 

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The can of worms is open again. Just what is an honest image? I was looking through a book on how to take good railway photographs published in the 60s/70s - I forget its title - and there was a shot of a Bulleid Pacific on the Bournemouth line with the inevitable telegraph pole growing out of the smokebox. The next paragraph explained how to remove this using some chemical or other and as an example the manipulated image appeared for comparison to the original. To look at the manipulated version you would never have known the pole was there but for the original image. The same technique in Photoshop is decried by many but just how many of the "honest" images taken way back are "honest" in the first place?

 

My Dad has always been very proud of his b/w photos and wished he had taken more. But he's mentioned many times how he also wished he could have afforded colour film back in the 60's and what he would give to see his shots in colour. Then about a year ago on BBC2 there was a documentary about some lost Dad's Army episodes found in a cupboard and that the boffins had found a way to digitally turn them into colour. So when I had eventually got round to scanning all my Dad's old b/w photos onto the computer I wondered if this could be done for some of his images. I typed into Google search "black & white photos into colour" and that's how I found the Black2colour.com website. I'd planned to give him this colour conversion photo for his 65th bday in December, but of course he just had to walk into the room and see the image on the computer just as I was looking at it this morning. I've now printed it out on A4 paper for him and he's seriously happy with it. At a cost of £26 per image it's not cheap and yes it's not perfect but it's good enough. So maybe I'll send one more b/w image of 34100 Appledore at Eastbourne shed for his bday to be converted to colour as this loco was his favourite and this time make sure he's doesn't see it so it can be a surprise.

 

Firstly anyone who is offended by digital manipulation or retouching please move on as it's a debate that nobody is going to win.

There's a series of images on my fotopic site illustrating and explaining how digitial colouring is done. This is the first of the series:

http://northernblue109.fotopic.net/p58765962.html

I don't know what magic technology the BBC may have but I know of no software that can automatically colourise black & white images - it's simply not possible to determine colour from tone alone. All my work is done by traditional hand colouring techniques, but using Photoshop tools on a digital image rather than inks and dyes on a monochrome print. The results are only as good as the skills, knowledge and time applied to the job.

The price quoted seems about right for the sample illustrated but, as the web site suggests, there are several factors that could affect the effort involved and hence the price. Whilst I don't actively sell my services, I'm always happy to offer guidance and opinion as to what may be possible; and to quote against specific requests. If the subject is of sufficient interest to me and I am able to publish the result on my fotopic site I my even do the work free of charge. Further guidance can be found here:

http://northernblue109.fotopic.net/p54882661.html

If you follow either of those links, please take time to explore the other material in the 'technques' collection (01) and, if you haven't already done so, have a look also at the railway collection (02). Thank you for your interest.