Tony Hayman

As an experiment I just tried a program called PxbimColorSuprise Ai. It colorizes B&W photos. I tried the free version (it doesn't have all the controls of the paid one) on some old photos and the results were... 25% amazing, you would think that the photo was taken in color, another 25% acceptable not great, but if you wanted to have a color picture of Grandpa then this would be OK... 25% somewhat OK, probably staying with the original B&W would be better and the final 25% trash the colorization did not work.

In at least 50% of the photos it exposed detail that was not obvious in the B&W photo which entirely surprised me.

In my experiment, all of my B&W photos were old, many going back to the 1940's and earlier, I would assume that better quality B&W photos would have better results.

I really don't know how many old photos I would like to colorize, but there are a few that if they were colorized would make a considerable difference.

My questions are, has anyone tried colorizing software? If so what software? Did that software get better results than PxbimColorSuprise Ai.?

Greg from Romeoville illinois Loc: Romeoville illinois

Do you mean this one? Have not tried it yet. Sale right now may be worth it.

https://pixbim.com/colorize-photos

Tony Hayman

Yes that is the one, for the price it seems to do a good job, I don't know if other software does it better.

SkipinSC Loc: South Carolina

This review might help a little:

https://youtu.be/HJmP8mbkfXI

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

I have colorized a photograph or two. Here's one for example. http://malarz.com/services/pop/index.html It was my first attempt, done years ago.

I compared what I did to that which AI did. AI failed considerably.
--Bob

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Amusing, interesting, but LOL I usually want to go the other way, from a color digital, film negative, positive, or print to Black and White digital. I use Ps with ACR, Nik, or Topaz Conversions from color to B&W. I usually find more detail in well done black and white images than color. The thing with B&W is you often need images with local contrast and texture to get bite in your images.

rook2c4 Loc: Philadelphia, PA USA

I think it is better to simply take the time and learn how to colorize B&W manually. It is not really all that difficult; there are plenty of tutorials available on the internet. AI software's capability to recognize what objects in an image are and then select appropriate colors for them will always be very limited. Software just doesn't have the life-long experience learning to recognize things as we do. But I guess looking for short cuts is part of human nature.

SkipinSC Loc: South Carolina

Bob- Looks great. What did you use to colorize it? How long did it take?

DWU2 Loc: Phoenix Arizona area

The latest releases of Photoshop CC have colorizing functionality.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

Yes it does and it impressed the crap out me when I tried it on some favorite TRI-X shots of my wife that I took of her when she was 50 years younger. It became obvious why and how I fell in love!

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Thank you very much, Skip. I used Ps but forget which version. For color, I photographed various things around my neighborhood. One neighbor had red brick walls, etc. I color sampled those photographs and then applied that color to the various parts of the photograph. It took a couple of days working slowly an hour or two each day. I used lots of layers and layer masks.
--Bob

traderjohn Loc: New York City

I think Photoshop offers that option.

SkipinSC Loc: South Carolina

Wow. Very impressive.