Old Colourized Image

These days several websites offer the possibility to upload a black and white image, klick a button and download a colourized image. Often not very realistic or well done, but quite fun after all. In the bad old days colour images were usually obtained by colouring a black and white image. The colourizing was done by humans (usually women) in a process that required a lot of care.. The quality could be quite good, but very few images were made this way as the price was high. In Denmark I have seen the proces predominantly used for colourizing aerial photographs of farms to be displayed in the property's living room.

A hand colourized photograph of a small farm on the Danish island Bornholm. Photo: Bornholmske bondegårde.

I tried colourizing a digital image myself. As the image was in colour, I first had to make it black and white. I then uploaded it, the computer did its thing and I'm now in possession of the image below. There are several free online services where you can colourize a digital image. The quality is mixed and sometimes the same website gives you one good image and an awfull one. I guess it depends on original image and on the artificial intelligence-system that the site employ to 'guess' the colours of the b/w image.

Next to the line east of Nystrup. The image looks suitably hand colourized and faded. Definately one of the better attempts.

I used the colourizing service https://deepai.org/machine-learning-model/colorizer