One of my main hobbies is genealogy and as a result I have tons of old B&W family photos scanned. I've seen the incredible results where people manually retouched their old photos in Photoshop or Painter to look quite authentic. However, for the same reason I like to automatically apply paint effects to my own modern images (ie, I don't have the patience to paint!), I also don't wish to hand color these hundreds or more old photos, or even use an app that serves as a point in-between (ie, draw some color lines that result in an area color fill, like a masking app). Maybe I'd do this for a select few, but not for folders full.
A recent genealogy newsletter I subscribe to highlighted a service provided by one of the online genealogy sites (
MyHeritage) but I wasn't able to test it due to continual failed uploads (two different computers, two locations), and I don't subscribe to their service so the testing would be limited to a handful. So I did some Googling and found some free online options for now.
I first discovered
the Algorithmia API. It does a nice job but with 2 main disadvantages: The results are small and watermarked.
Another service,
colourise.sg, is the one I am currently enjoying experimenting with. The results are larger and not watermarked, but you have to do the reCAPCHA dance for every upload. At first it's a checkbox, eventually you have to do the puzzles.
Processing time for both services is minimal.
There's also something called
DeOldify that is more geeky than I wish to deal with right now (maybe I'll go build a GIMP package instead, ha!).
Anyway, I'm curious to see which AI-type methods some of you use and can recommend.
In the meantime, here are some of my results using Algorithmia, as well as a comparison between Algorithmia and Colourise. Plus a screenshot from a
DeOldify webpage. Photos are from the 1930s and 40s.