New Colorization process? Could be interesting to see what it could do to TV releases (1 Viewer)

[Rick P]

Don't shoot the messenger, but apparently a new algroithm that seems to be better than any colorization process I've seen...

pictures and video clips here...

http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~yweiss/Colorization/

just FYI

 

[Gordon St Pierre]

I know the can of worms this will open but I will just say that, That is definately a really amazing process .

 

[Rick P]

What's more amazing is that they are documenting the algorithm in their paper...

 

[Lynda-Marie]

What is also interesting is that the colors look natural, rather than an obvious paint job like some colorization processes.

What I've always wondered with colorization, however, is HOW can they determine what the original color of something was?

For example, an old black and white film is colorized, and the lead actress is suddenly wearing a stunning red dress. Was the dress originally red, or is there a way to figure it out, looking at the black and white images?

 

[Scott Kimball]

They don't... and there lies the problem.

Besides the fact, art design, set design. lighting design and makeup are tuned specifically for black and white photography - not to mention the use of special photographic filters, etc. Even if you knew the colors that were present on the set, you wouldn't want to use them for color output.

-Scott

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Exactly. So, while the actress may have been wearing a green dress on the set in a particular scene, that color was not selected because it was green, but because it looked a certain way in black and white. Had the movie been filmed in Techicolor, the color choice for the dress may very well have been red (or blue, or whatever).

 

[James L White]

Easy grass is either green or brown

but seriosuly I read soemthing about colorizing movies/TV shows and pretty much the poeple involed in the process just
pick a color for such things as clothes, cars, etc

 

[Jeff#]

Fortunately the colorization process used for both movies and TV shows is a thing of the past. It was a horrible fad that came and went in the 1980s and insulted the artistic integrity of the original product that was shot in black & white, so I'm not concerned of it ever coming back that way.

 

[Jeff#]

Double post here -- sorry!

 

[Rick P]

Unless of course you're dealing with something that may have originally been in color and now only b/w prints exist (some of the episodes of Doctor Who come to mind)

 

[Robert Floto]

I would think in that case that a lot of the color can be determined from still photos and those who worked on the episodes.

 

[David Galindo]

That is really amazing...wow.

 

[Brad P]

Check out what Legend Films has been doing. I'm an opponent of colorization of black and white films, but still - wow.

Examples can be found at legendfilms dot net.

 

[Lynda-Marie]

Thanks for the info on the colorization process, gentlemen!

Now I understand the request [demand?] Orson Welles made before he passed away, "Keep Ted Turner and his goddamn crayolas away from my movie!" [Citizen Kane]

 

[AndyMcKinney]

Yes, in this instance (not colourising, but re-colouring), colouring B/W material is entirely justified.

Most of the obvious candidates are the scads of British shows that had their colour VTs destroyed and only B/W copies remain (various episodes of Dr. Who, Steptoe and Son, the Goodies and Timeslip, for example), but there's plenty of U.S. telvision like this, too. Some shows that went out live (or almost-live) in colour in the U.S. weren't videotaped: the only backup copies made were B/W kinescopes. The last season (or so) of game show "What's My Line" is one example. And, some shows, such as in the case of "Dark Shadows", are like the previously-mentioned British shows where some episodes have "lost" colour episodes, with only B/W copies remaining.

 

[CaseyL]

That's a very intruiging process. Cool stuff.

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

 

[Jeff Jacobson]

 

[KeithAP]

It looks great but I am bit suspicious. There wasn't a single example of a well known black and white image/video that had the process applied. Every sample they had could have been color originally and converted to black and white for the purposes of their "demo." In other words, it could be a scam. I would like to see the process applied to something that we know is a black and white original, such as the video of the Hindenburg crash.

-Keith

 

[PhilipG]

It seems to be incomplete. :frowning: You need mex.h, not supplied, and probably Matlab base software too.