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niceslcguy t1_iw014jn wrote

I played with this a short while ago. Here are some examples:

I tried others. It is rather finicky. Sadly, I didn't record the text I used for each set.

For the "1901 Advertising for Wives" I used the auto settings but changed the text part. I removed the auto-added word "outhouse" and replaced it with "log cabin" to have the colorization a bit more accurate.

edit: Here is what the colorization text I used for "1920 - Aerial view of Edinburgh".

>A stock photo of wing, plane, cloud, castle, hill, grass, and forest. Small contrasting details in color. In color film.

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ScaryShoes t1_iw05p27 wrote

Wow, that's very impressive. I've seen some AI colorized photos before that were not anywhere near this level.

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niceslcguy t1_iw06nsa wrote

To get decent color, you really have to play around with the auto-generated text. I suggest copying each set of text you like as you play around so you can see what does / doesn't work. Would be nice to find more details on how the A.I. is colorizing things.

I found that fixing the colorization for some objects would mess up the rest of the picture.

For example, there was a BW pic of a fast train. Each time I changed the color of the train, it tinted the entire picture. Some weird colors for the train made everything else look good, and some good colors for the train messed everything else up.

If you are willing to use photoshop to slice out objects, you can get better overall results.

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Bifi323 t1_iw0nnk3 wrote

I just tried it with a random picture and it got it all wrong, AND called me pregnant :/

https://imgur.com/a/5eSPftJ

Edit: the picture I fed the ai

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Bread-Zeppelin t1_iw1umni wrote

Other than calling you pregnant that's a pretty good job IMO. I don't believe you can tell from a grayscale photo if something is red/green like the colours in your shirt, so the fact it took a 50/50 guess and got it wrong with that one item isn't that bad at all.

I saw a documentary about people who re-colourised images professionally and they said that a lot of the decisions on what colour to make clothing was done based on research of what styles, dyes and inks were commonplace in the time period, rather than the photo itself.

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niceslcguy t1_iw0s58y wrote

The AI isn't great for detecting some objects, though it often gets a surprising amount correct. Most pics will need tweaking of the text used for colorization. Note that many pictures are currently bad for this sort of thing. Like comics, for example.

I think it is still being worked on, so I'll revisit it later after it has been improved.

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sellinglower t1_iw1u29d wrote

> AND called me pregnant

Perhaps the AI does know something you don't just yet

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sweptawayfromyou t1_iw1xmmb wrote

You should have posted the black and white version you uploaded for comparison! I tried it with a black and white photo of mine and it even got my hair color correct, which should not be easy to know from a photo without colors!

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Bifi323 t1_iw1y1yv wrote

I just added it to my original comment. I'm gonna try some more later :)

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FerretChrist t1_iw2qxjd wrote

What do you consider "wrong" about it? It looks fine to me.

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Whirlywynd t1_iw2wvte wrote

She’s probably talking about the incorrect sweatshirt color

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enilea t1_iw33y6o wrote

Sometimes it just has to guess blindly, it's almost impossible to know the true colors. There are many it gets right based on the texture it's made of, but since clothes can be any color it doesn't have a proper way to know. If you know the sweatshirt has to be red you can specify it in the prompt and it should work.

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Whirlywynd t1_iw77v62 wrote

thanks I guess but I was literally just answering the question. Wasn’t confused about anything.

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thegodfather0504 t1_iw2l7yv wrote

"I love pregnant women."

"But...I am not pregnant."

"Wait till you meet me." (⁠ ͡⁠°⁠ ͜⁠ʖ⁠ ͡⁠°⁠)

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andrak7 t1_iw0gb85 wrote

The NASA one especially looks awesome

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GucciGuano t1_iw1a5sf wrote

how did it know what color buttons they were from the 2nd pic?

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niceslcguy t1_iw1d63v wrote

I believe it makes partial guesses based on training data.

So, if that is standard colorization for those type of buttons, it might be somewhat accurate. It is possibly all wrong, of course.

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sentient_ballsack t1_iw1rurj wrote

It guesses based on fed data and color values. AI colorisation tends to play it safe and isn't necessarily accurate at all, which is why it's so controversial among historians.

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nefex99 t1_iw2s9m5 wrote

I love the site and examples OP posted, but also this comment needs to be seen more ^

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Trynottodent t1_iw0ln0f wrote

TIL that 1920 Edinburgh was the model for King’s Landing

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compsciasaur t1_iw28c10 wrote

Whoa, impressive!

I need a wives advertisement like that.

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superfluous_t t1_ivz9s6x wrote

Thanks for posting this - just tried on an old pic of my grandad and it worked great - my mum will love it

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Select_Repair_2820 t1_ivzxc32 wrote

Why does the phrase "traditional AI colorizer" sound weird?

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dogtierstatus t1_iw1a7t2 wrote

It sounds like an oxymoron. Traditional and AI feels opposite

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usernameblankface t1_iw0rvpn wrote

Having AI that can accomplish something as complicated as colorizing an old picture is a new thing. Too recent to have a Traditional version.

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lucellent t1_iw2bui5 wrote

There have been AI colorization tools for at least 5-6 years now. Not on this level, but it's not entirely new.

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DeaconDoctor t1_iw0u9lt wrote

This is pretty cool, but I always wonder what these kind of "upload to receive" sites are doing with the files after uploading them.

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KOHTPOBEP3A t1_iw1ovyn wrote

Just don't send your naked photos or any you don't want to leak. At the same time a photo of you eating ice cream as a child in 1970 is something really valuable only to you.

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Justforthenuews t1_iw1s32d wrote

Future anthropologists, current dataminers, and ai trainers would disagree with you.

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DaniB3 t1_iw0e11p wrote

Thank you for this, I colorized some pics of my grandparents and when I showed my mom she cried

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derpanzerschreck t1_ivztmg3 wrote

Thanks it's really usefull. It's highly consistent I tried with new photos

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9-11GaveMe5G t1_iw09444 wrote

I took several photos I had, turned them black and white, then uploaded them. It was way off every time. This is literally just randomly guessing

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tbmny t1_iw0hxdh wrote

Try Myheritage colorizer. It's consistently the best in testing.

Of course it's paid, and all colorizers are ultimately guessing

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IlllIIllllIlIlllllll t1_iw1fgiq wrote

It’s guessing obviously (since the color information is destroyed in the image you uploaded) but it’s using AI to assume things like grass = green and sky = blue. If it makes your tshirt red then obviously that’s a guess, and there’s no way for it to have known if it was actually green.

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Treacherous_Peach t1_iw1n33m wrote

What did you think it was doing..? Did you think it somehow knew the color of your shirt?

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condog1035 t1_iw0jysi wrote

It got the color of my shirt EXACTLY correct in a black and white picture I ran through it. This is incredible.

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Nikmerenda t1_iw0ll79 wrote

Was this all in order to Rickroll people clicking on the "about" section?

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Wishilikedhugs t1_iw1hqhc wrote

Could this be fed a series of frames like in a black and white movie/show and be consistent? Half tempted to see if I can colorize Doctor Who.

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DigStock t1_iw2desf wrote

There is also this function in photoshop now

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NeeDleZ1992 t1_ivzxjkl wrote

Nice 👍🏼 I'll try soon with old pictures of my family

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KGBspy t1_ivzy6rr wrote

this worked great on some B&W pics I had on my computer, thanks!

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3Cees78 t1_iw06so4 wrote

Thanks for this. Did a couple of my mam’s wedding photos, they look amazing. She loves them.

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Ainar86 t1_iw0jom4 wrote

Oh man, this is great! I have so many old family pictures of people I've could never have met and now they look so real! Sadly, this seems to struggle with sepia ones and pics from before 1900.

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OkAffect58 t1_iw0kup2 wrote

It really is crazy what AI can do

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poolside123 t1_iw0mrni wrote

This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever come across on Reddit!😦

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mariepon t1_iw0wgsd wrote

This is really cool, thank you for sharing!

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Steiger92 t1_iw141np wrote

This is incredible!

Have a lot of old photos of my family and so far the ones I’ve uploaded look great!

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sscreric t1_iw16339 wrote

damn this is pretty gnarly. I took some of my pics with colors, and turned it black and white and uploaded it to see what kind of colors it would put on. Not disappointed.

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Almighty-Arceus t1_iw1s09b wrote

Somewhere, Ted Turner just jizzed in his pants.

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youreeka t1_iw1w9c4 wrote

I did this with one of my mum’s old photos. It looked amazing. She wasn’t that thrilled and told me her sari was grey not blue.

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User6RE001 t1_iw1xzy4 wrote

I love it. Had some black and white photos of my grandparents.. Really great in color now.

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Kebab-Destroyer t1_iw24hxq wrote

I threw one of my B&W wedding photos on there, chose a particularly colourful one (or would have been were it not greyscale) and it came out pretty close to real life

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Nonameswhere t1_iw2h3jl wrote

Very interesting. Good share OP. Thanks.

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sbw_62 t1_iw2nkw2 wrote

I love this. I’ll be busy for a few days.

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DoWhyMe t1_iw2p8t5 wrote

Well this is useful, thanks!

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neopointer t1_iw2rb82 wrote

Amazing. The photographer of my wedding was very stupid and didn't want to send some original color pics. This site helped a lot. Thanks!

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MrUnstable69 t1_iw2ruk8 wrote

This is absolutely incredible! Thank you for sharing.

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indecisionmay t1_iw2so6y wrote

Amazing! Playing with some old photos from the 40s. You rock OP!

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IAmGwego t1_iw2v38n wrote

> Website that automatically colorizes old black-and-white photos

But can it colorize recent black-and-white photos?

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MN4L t1_iw2wa9v wrote

Thank you for this. I put a photo of my great grandmother on and we got to see it in color for the first time ever.

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ChipMunkley t1_iw2whh9 wrote

This is awesome! Thanks bro!

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OJimmy t1_iw2xi1c wrote

Mind auto corrected the title to "colonizes"

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wickla t1_iw3d78w wrote

That sucks.

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regedit007 t1_iw3nt9e wrote

Check out the about section lol

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10almonds t1_iw5amub wrote

Has anyone compared this to Photoshop's auto colour feature?

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Jericola t1_iwcjeiu wrote

Excellent!. What a gem of a site.

However help, please . I’m old.

I use an IPad. It says ‘download’ but where did the photo go after I hit this button? The new colour photo isn’t in ‘my pictures’.

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joman66 t1_iwo021s wrote

I got rick-rolled :|

​

The website is awesome though!

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Arodg25 t1_iw2o3i7 wrote

I got fucking rick rolled. 5 stars.

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andreasbeer1981 t1_iw07wqo wrote

myheritage is offering such a service for years.

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unzercharlie t1_iw0cm85 wrote

I've done dozens of photo restorations and I am so against arbitrary colorization. It's bastardizing the source material. Sharpen it, fine. Reduce noise, fine. Correct imperfections, fine. Adding color to a photo like a coloring book is so pointless. I honestly don't understand why anyone wants to do it to a photo that means anything to them.

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Raxsah t1_iw0gh2n wrote

For some people, particularly the older generation, they only have black and white photos of loved ones to remember them by, but that's not an accurate representation of who that person was, because the world obviously doesn't exist in monochrome.

For those people I imagine it would be emotional to finally see an image of a loved one in colour, and not have to rely on memory alone which can fade over time

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unzercharlie t1_iw0ir1u wrote

I completely understand the sentiment, and I love the idea of someone seeing a loved one in color.

I did a restoration for my grandparents, but I was able to say "what color was that jacket?" and "what color was that dress?" and "what color was that truck?" They loved it and I loved doing it. I googled to find the original colors everywhere I could.

Colorizing something and just guessing the colors, or letting AI guess the colors, is something else entirely. I get doing it to learn colorization, or as a fun experiment, but I still believe it's the equivalent of a coloring book, and ruins a perfectly good black and white photo, which is a more accurate representation of history.

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JimJohnes t1_iw1iwp5 wrote

How can you "ruin" digital copy of a photo?

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u1tralord t1_iw0khhl wrote

Future iterations likely will have those features. This tech is just recently being made available to the public.

For now, you can just re-run it again for another variation

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brownowski t1_iw0x2b6 wrote

You can add that into the prompt given to the AI already. E.g. a red truck or woman in a yellow dress. Although, I have found you need to find a name for the colour that represents it pretty accurately, otherwise it might add a tint to the entire photo. You might get poor results just saying brown or red instead of burnt sienna or something more specific.

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blitz672 t1_iw3r92o wrote

So I did some tinkering with the word text and it was a bit better. What's funny is running the same original img Thu a 2nd yielded vastly different results.

Original color

https://imgur.com/z6KsLMJ.jpg

Black and white

https://imgur.com/C7bu2Yq.jpg

1st time Thu

https://imgur.com/j9a39gK.jpg

2nd

https://imgur.com/z6KsLMJ.jpg

Tweeked text prompt

https://imgur.com/C7bu2Yq.jpg

https://imgur.com/EjnZBwf.jpg https://imgur.com/NFTzuT5.jpg

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enilea t1_iw34pti wrote

>letting AI guess the colors

You can change the text prompt to choose different colors

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dutch1664 t1_iw0kkmx wrote

Not only does it give a better real-world feel - the world isn't black and white. It (this website OP posted) has brought out a lot more detail in the couple dozen photos I've run through it. Lots of things I noticed that I didn't before. So yes, this process definitely has value.

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gee_gra t1_iw2ddk0 wrote

For artistic photography you're absolutely correct, but for pics of some cunts gran from nineteen-dickety-two then colourising absolutely has value

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blitz672 t1_iw38irj wrote

https://www.reddit.com/r/Colorization/comments/mqn103/the_problem_with_ai_colorization/

Idk why ur downvoted

*Here is an example from what I link I ran thu OP's link

https://imgur.com/SnDNE4r.jpg B&W

https://imgur.com/CiECkGQ.jpg OP's

https://imgur.com/ka7l9xS.jpg My link's AI

https://imgur.com/9Y8mfoS.jpg Original color

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Psychological-Scar30 t1_iw3f2m1 wrote

People in a subreddit dedicated to cool technology react differently to a statement than people in a subreddit that seems completely oblivious to the fact that technology constantly improves and insist on making fun of it's current limitations and patting themselves on the back for how much better they are than an AI? Color me surprised.

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