Recently, I have seen many old colored photos from the internet which obviously should be black and white in terms of the time when they were taken. Although the first color photo came up in 1861, most of photos taken in early 20 century are black and white. I am interested in how these black and white photos were turned into color pictures. After a detail research, I found we could do this in the following methods:
Firstly we need to scan black& white photos into our PC. Then next things would be use some tools to colorize pictures. So far I know there are three ways to do that.
1: Photoshop is the most well known option, but it is too complicated for amateurs like me, it is a big headache for me to colorize a picture with it.
2: Use a software named “Recolored”, it said that only few steps can turn black& white photos into color ones. The official site is: www.recolored.com .
3: Use a software named “BlackMagic”. It not only can be used to colorize Black & White photos, but also Sepia, IR (infrared) photos. Like “Recolored”, it is also simple to use and can make the colored photos looks pretty natural. The official site is: www.blackmagic-color.com.
After colorizing a photo with these tools, you can print out the photo if you want to show them in a frame. It is cool!
If you know some other ways or software, please put them into the comments box below.
The followings are some oldest color photos in the world(From the wikipedia):
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“Tartan ribbon“, the first permanent color photograph, taken by James Clerk Maxwell in 1861.
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An 1877 color photo by Louis Ducos du Hauron, a French pioneer of color photography.
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Early color photograph from Russia, created by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii as part of his work to document the Russian Empire from 1909 to 1915
Source: www.joehe.com