Image stacking to the rescue

[jaapv]

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Interesting article on the BBC:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52264743

[zeitz]

Very poor journalism.  The term AI was not used a single time.  Claiming a machine watched him do the first image, machine learning could have been credited with helping do all the others.  The linking of point across multiple images could be called a neural network.

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[jaapv]

I don't think that the object of the article was to provide an  in-depth tutorial.

[Exodies]

Er, I think zeitz is making fun of journalists.

[JJ_Mirinda]

I like to see restored photos. When you see them old and dusty you have a feeling that people then were different. But when photos are well colorized you start to realize that they were real people, who had the same thoughts and feelings you may have, and it makes characters from the photo closer to me as a viewer. I am not speaking only about Apollo 13 crew right now, but about old photos in general. 

[250swb]

I suppose Peter Jackson has moved the goalposts with 'They Shall Not Grow Old' in terms of colourisation, but generally I'm dead against colourising old B&W photos without context (context is what helps Jackson get away with it), because it's patronising to history and says 'look I know better'. Why not stick a modern pencil sketch of a bison over a stone age cave painting of bison by way of explaining they didn't know how to draw a bison very well and this is what a bison should really look like? Well colourising old photographs is nothing more than that, distorting history for future generations while at the same time removing the photographs context. Already you can find in certain Google searches the colourised image of a well known scene far outweighs if not entirely swamps finding the original photograph turning history on it's head for future generations.

[jaapv]

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I don’t agree. Painting in Lithos and etchings has been an accepted technique for centuries. Period hand-clouded daguerreotypes are not uncommon either. 

[250swb]

3 hours ago, jaapv said:

I don’t agree. Painting in Lithos and etchings has been an accepted technique for centuries. Period hand-clouded daguerreotypes are not uncommon either. 

Period coloured, not by people trying to make the past look like the present.

[jaapv]

Or trying to make the past come alive?

[250swb]

5 hours ago, jaapv said:

Or trying to make the past come alive?

No, it's trying to create alternate history. You can have battle reenactments and nobody is in doubt they weren't filmed in 1815 at Waterloo, the technology will never fit. But with Victorian postcards and studio photos etc. there is a profound ignorance about what was and was not possible in the day. But why should anybody need to be an expert in photography to decide? All too many images are now presented as de facto colour photographs by people who think they are showing how history really was. But at the same they trample on history because the people in those images never ever saw their own image in colour, so colourisation is to make history conform to our world, not to illustrate their world.

[jaapv]

But then - history is the present-day interpretation of occurrences in the past. I see no harm, only advantages, in presenting our present-day interpretation as clearly and vividly as possible.  It is not as if content is altered.  I find a colourized photograph, if done properly and respectfully, a window into the past.

[david strachan]

Some remastering of films adds to the visual.

But do wish there weren't so many B&W films so badly coloured. 

They should be left as B&W.

...

[LocalHero1953]

8 hours ago, 250swb said:

No, it's trying to create alternate history. You can have battle reenactments and nobody is in doubt they weren't filmed in 1815 at Waterloo, the technology will never fit. But with Victorian postcards and studio photos etc. there is a profound ignorance about what was and was not possible in the day. But why should anybody need to be an expert in photography to decide? All too many images are now presented as de facto colour photographs by people who think they are showing how history really was. But at the same they trample on history because the people in those images never ever saw their own image in colour, so colourisation is to make history conform to our world, not to illustrate their world.

You're interested in preserving the techniques of the past as historical context, which is fair enough. Colouring old photos is about understanding the world that was being photographed, which is also fair enough. They are different things.

We would certainly like to know what the animals that stone age people painted looked like, but that doesn't mean we don't appreciate their art, as art.

[250swb]

7 hours ago, jaapv said:

But then - history is the present-day interpretation of occurrences in the past. I see no harm, only advantages, in presenting our present-day interpretation as clearly and vividly as possible.  It is not as if content is altered.  I find a colourized photograph, if done properly and respectfully, a window into the past.

I'm currently working on colouring 'The Decisive Moment' and a collection of Ansel Adam's Yosemite photographs, that should make history clearer shouldn't it? Then I'll get around to colouring all the baffling B&W photos that turn up on LUF, just to correct the fault and make them understandable. 

It is already a problem that people need to photograph their dinner so their friends can share the experience, colouring-in old photographs to make history shareable is an equally flippant view. It's an attempt to make history one dimensional, make history conform to todays norms. The first family portrait was probably the proudest day in a family's life, but because it was in B&W you've now got people saying 'that's not good enough, I can improve your proudest day', well what arrogance.

[jaapv]

I think we are talking at cross-purposes.  You are addressing artistic values. I am talking about photographs as a record of history. It would make absolutely no sense to colourize an Ansel Adams landscape. You can do it better by going out and photographing the same landscape with an SL, should you wish to depict it in colour. Not that it would be more than a postcard artistically.

But you cannot go back and record the suffering in a 14-18 trench. In that case the photograph is nothing more than a messaging medium. Anything that tells the story more clearly is fine by me.

I find the remark "confirm to present-day norms" puzzling. Of course history is interpreted by present-day historians for a present-day audience. Why are there new Bible translations all the time? Because the King James translation was written for a 17th century audience and we need one for a 21st century audience.

As for photographing family dinners, I am happy that you were not around to advise Leonardo...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[AndreasG]

For me one of the most fascinating colourized B/W photos is the one below showing 29 Nobel prize winners at the Solvay conference 1927, even if the colours are more phantasy than former reality:

https://www.amazon.de/Zero-Wissenschaftler-Konferenzposter-Standardgröße-klassisches/dp/B07KF4NJLC

[250swb]

9 hours ago, jaapv said:

I think we are talking at cross-purposes.  You are addressing artistic values. I am talking about photographs as a record of history. It would make absolutely no sense to colourize an Ansel Adams landscape. You can do it better by going out and photographing the same landscape with an SL, should you wish to depict it in colour. Not that it would be more than a postcard artistically.

Not really, I'm against Photoshopping both the facts of history and art in history because one will follow the other. When history (or art) isn't seen as 'good enough' as a way to represent its own era then in a wider context it's game-on for individuals to over restore a Da Vinci, a Bresson, or the family album. Colourising ad hock is the thin end of the wedge.

[jaapv]

Facts will be interpreted in newer contexts with or without Photoshopping. History is the art of hindsight.