Tweet OK, I'm going to be the bad guy here

Thank you, Louie, for what will probably be the biggest laugh of my day -- I lost weight. You are not the bad guy, and I also thank you for being so honest. I agree with about 96.4 percent of what you're saying -- elucidations and exceptions forthcoming.

Like a lot of people here, I long to see my parents' and grandparents' world the way they saw it. That's why I seek out colorful images from the past -- magazines, postcards, pamphlets, fashion plates, and the like. Compared to these, the colorized pictures I see here and elsewhere on the Internet look like they've been left out in the rain.

One of the things I hate in the colorizations here is the use of aquamarine, which was not a fashionable color in the 1920s and '30s, and still is not fashionable today. Al Jolson wouldn't be caught dead in an aquamarine sweater, not even on the golf course! Deep red or burgundy was very fashionable toward the end of the '20s, but not magenta. Cobalt was another fashionable color back then -- my own grandmother was married wearing a cobalt gown. And I was surprised to find out that the stage microphones that NBC used in its radio broadcasts in the 1930s were actually a deep cobalt blue.

Anybody serious about colorizing photographs should be researching the colors used in the past, and I know of no better way that to read the magazines (and some newspapers) of the past. Pull out the bound volumes of The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, Liberty, The American Magazine, McCall's, Ladies Home Journal, and others at your local library. As you leaf through them, pay particular attention to the ads -- heck, you can learn more about "local color" in the 1920s by looking at just the ads for Camel and Chesterfield cigarettes.

But if your library has everything on microfilm (shame on them!), just look for the above-mentioned magazines on eBay. Many listings include color grabs from the magazines themselves, and will serve your purpose just as well.

(One of the reasons I collect Liberty magazine is that it was the most colorful magazine of its time -- beautifully composed, beautifully printed. It was the first magazine to be printed on a four-color press week in and week out, and the early issues literally explode with color. With its covers, ads, story illustrations, fashion plates, and even color photographs -- Liberty really brings the 1920s to life. Because the ads were printed in four colors on heavier paper than the rest of the magazine, the colors are almost blindingly brilliant, and Liberty ads by themselves are in big demand by collectors on eBay and elsewhere.)

In short, if you must colorize, DO YOUR HOMEWORK! There are so many sources on the web where you can find authentic old color images. Seek them out, and learn from them!

Here's two experiments:

The postcard look:




Old color photo:



And the original:

CoffeeDan Quote:
Al Jolson wouldn't be caught dead in an aquamarine sweater, not even on the golf course!

OK, OK, I'll change the color of Al's sweater!!

THE NEW YORKER is available on-line back to 1925, with original color ads.

Wow. This is just AWFUL.

I certainly don't think of you as the bad guy here. Gadzooks!

I can't look at that soldier one without thinking that his head is going to pop off and his leg is going to rotate laterally to kick it like a soccer ball.

I just laughed so much I think I've ruptured something......

[Danny Burk]

To me this looks remarkably like the colorizations of old material that Terry Gilliam did for his animations on Monty Python's Flying Circus. I'm expecting the guy to get crushed by a giant foot any moment, accompanied by the usual raspberry sound effect.

It's uncanny - that was also my thought on first seeing it. Not the giant foot; somehow I expected the head to grow wings and fly away on its own.

Here's Al and Irving with (hopefully) an historically correct red sweater:


Here's one I did for a friend who actually liked it. This may be the only photo of Frankie and Al together:


I appreciate the tip on the cobalt blue microphones but I won't be using that color. The reason is simple - nobody would believe they were really that color.

I think these Jolson photos look awful. Jolie and Irving on the golf course look like something out of a bad acid trip.

Why colorize them at all? I doubt it will start the kids stampeding to I Tunes to download, "When the Red Red Robin Comes Bob Bob Bobbing Along."

I'm inclined to agree with you - the Sinatra/Jolson photo was low res and presented problems of its own. The golf photo was a fledgling effort. Here's the b/w original:

A utilitarian use of b/w to record a scene and not much, if anything, on the artistic use of b/w and greytones. Not even the use of a filter for the sky. Yet the mind's eye can easily "see" the green of the grass, the blue of the sky (to quote Berlin's "I Used To Be Color Blind"). Here's another shot at it:

I want to be a "bad guy" too! I would like to see these most interesting photos in their original state. ALL of these attempts at "colorization" look awful. AWFUL, I tell you! Generally, I believe in encouraging creativity, but this is creativity of the unnecessary variety, carried out ineptly by rank amateurs. Please leave the photos as they are -- in good old BLACK AND WHITE!

Old color photo:

This doesn't look like a color photo, but it DOES look like a superior colored postcard of the era.

Jolson's sweater simply cannot be a dark colour like red or blue. If it were, it would be far darker in the grey scale of the original B&W.

My guess is that it was grey, French-vanilla white, or light beige.


Jim

The grass on the golf course is too bilious a shade.

Thanks for the feedback. Al's sweater probably is some shade of gray but I made it Navy Blue to add a little color to their attire. Another issue of color is that b/w photos were never planned for color so nobody thought in those terms. Had they, Al might have worn a more colorful sweater, although perhaps not Navy Blue (or red as in the earlier draft). As for the grass, I'm getting different tones depending on the monitor I use. I have a Tru-Green version that looks too candy-colored. I'll have to work on that.

I admit my rank amateur standing here but let me suggest it's harmless fun. Andy Warhol made a fortune doing similar things with photos of Marilyn Monroe, etc. Such works can probably be copyrighted as new works - I'm an attorney in my day job.

Since I'm running this photo of Al & Irving more than I ever thought I would, let me mention a sad historical footnote. What golf course do you think they are at? Don't bother checking the major country clubs around LA circa 1929. According Joan Benny's book on her father Jack Benny, SUNDAY NIGHTS AT SEVEN, Jews were not permitted to join the LA/Hollywood country clubs during this era. Eventually, the Jewish community established its own club, Hillcrest. So Al & Irving may very well be on a public golf course because, despite their stature, they were barred from the private clubs.

The problem you have to deal with with earlier photos (pre-1930s) is that many of them are taken on orthochromatic stock, which is only sensitive to blue and green (usually only blue), and doesn't reproduce tonalities naturally.

Also, for things to look natural, you have to have a good, clean scan with good density for starters. High contrast scans or scans from books, etc,. don't lend themselves well.

Speaking of scans from books, the upcoming new post on the Arliss Archives features a very rare photo I found some years ago but only in the UK edition of Mr. A's 1940 memoirs. The photo doesn't even look that good in the original book (and it's a 1st edition at that). Getting it into a high quality scan, then restoring it as much as possible to its b/w glory, the next step was my beloved cinemagraphic painting (aka "colorizing" to the uninitiated).
If you want to complain, you'll have to stand on line in back of me but, believe me, the b/w original wasn't so hot to start with:

I want to be a "bad guy" too! I would like to see these most interesting photos in their original state. ALL of these attempts at "colorization" look awful. AWFUL, I tell you! Generally, I believe in encouraging creativity, but this is creativity of the unnecessary variety, carried out ineptly by rank amateurs. Please leave the photos as they are -- in good old BLACK AND WHITE!

"Rank Amateur" at this I am not. I don't claim to be a professional, but I have colorized probably 4 to 5 thousand photos since 2002! I have used only three programs in that time frame. The one I have now I got with my computer in 2006. Most people on other boards like my work and I have been complimented time and again on it. I was even asked to colorize photos for various other peoples websites. In-fact,I have been asked to copyright and market the stuff I do, but have turned that down several times. I personally think I can easily make allot of stills here that have been posted in this thread look much better than they do currently with a few simple adjustments.

Gagman, I think we're the "bad guys" on this thread. I've admired your work and have said so. If your reference to tweaking a few of the photos that have appeared here was a reference to my stuff, then I'd be grateful for anything you would care to do. In recognition of any efforts you may undertake, I'll make you a member of the Arliss Archives. That will bring the total membership up to two - you and me.

Either I'm getting better with my cinemagraphic paintings or I've become desensitized to how bad they are. Here are three hot off the press:



From the 1923 GREEN GODDESS:


And that pesky Al Jolson who doesn't know how to color-coordinate his wardrobe:

ALL of these attempts at "colorization" look awful. AWFUL, I tell you!

ALL???? What a load of tosh .

The above is simply stunning! Don't know what software you are using Gagman 66, but it's been very tastefully and carefully colorized. The compliments you have received in the past are well deserved.

I use Corel Painter on a Mac (and Photoshop) but doubt I could ever achieve anything quite like this.

Keep up the colorizing.....

countryslicker,

Thanks for the positive comments. They are much appreciated. I hope that you will like these two as well.

Bob,

Your work looks very impressive to me. Just a little to vivid here and there. But looks allot like some vintage lobby-cards that I have seen.




Harold And Mildred-Snuggle Up A Little Closer"




Bebe Daniels And Richard Dix-SINNERS IN HEAVEN (1924)




May McAvoy and Gwen Lee in "The Little Snob"

Gagman,
The eyes in your colorized photos look like Lugosi in "White Zombie", and not in a good way. I have yet to see any photos in this thread that even look half way natural.

Louie,

OK, Let's see you do better! So what is wrong with the eyes here? The effect that you apparently are complaining about I worked hard to achieve. It doesn't just happen. Normally the eyes would look like a blob of color with no sparkle. Now you may prefer that, but I certainly don't.





Corinne Griffith and Victor Varconi -My Lady Divine

Louie,

OK, Let's see you do better! So what is wrong with the eyes here? The effect that you apparently are complaining about I worked hard to achieve. It doesn't just happen. Normally the eyes would look like a blob of color with no sparkle. Now you may prefer that, but I certainly don't.





Corinne Griffith and Victor Varconi -My Lady Divine

I don't need or want to do better, don't you remember, I started this thread! The eyes glow and look unnatural have you ever seen another human being with eyes like that? In fact your "artistic" eyes look like this:

Louie,

With respect, that is your opinion. No one else has complained about the eyes. You are the only one who has said a thing about them. My opinion is you need to adjust your monitor. Because your claim is is strictly the Bunk!

Why does anyone want to colorize B&W photos in the first place? This is not just a rhetorical question - I would like to know. Is it in an attempt to make them, along with old movies, more attractive to someone or to younger folk or what?

To me it all just seems facile. Some of the photos in this thread look nice, others look gaudy, but they ALL look unnatural.

You ask a fair question. I'll answer it this way- b/w is unnatural. We don't see in b/w and much of the history of b/w photography is based on expediency - color was too complex and expensive. I won't paint b/w portraits because the photographer is using b/w creatively and in a deliberately stylized way. But much of b/w photography is utilitarian and not artistic at all. In other words, there's a lot of bla in black and white. We see in color so I rather debate why I gave Al Jolson a navy blue sweater instead of beige than leave a very bland looking b/w photo alone. I rather admit that I went overboard in my choice of a color or its intensity. That my friend is creativity.

Why does anyone want to colorize B&W photos in the first place? This is not just a rhetorical question - I would like to know. Is it in an attempt to make them, along with old movies, more attractive to someone or to younger folk or what?

To me it all just seems facile. Some of the photos in this thread look nice, others look gaudy, but they ALL look unnatural.

It's a legitimate part of photography and has been for many, many years. Hand-colored 8x10 prints were done all the time because of demand before color film was available. It continued to be done on both the commercial and art sides up through, well, now, although I saw my last show of hand-colored prints in the late 1990s. Some people are good at it, some not so good. Being done digitally expands the choices the colorist can make, and since nearly anything goes now, there are more errors in taste. Note: In my comments, I am not judging any of the colorized photos here, and I don't believe accuracy is all.

For the vast amount of the history of photography, only B/W was available. Even when color came in, people like Irving Penn, Capa, Ansel Adams, Steichen, Julius Shulman, Cartier-Bresson, Strand, Weston, Cunningham, Brassai, Atget, Man Ray, Walker Evans, Sander, Russell Lee, Dorothea Lange, Weegee, Avedon, Warhol, Cindy Sherman, William Wegman, all continued to shoot in black and white. And guess what? So do the studio photographers! I should know, since I work with them every day, and the stills are 95% black and white through the 1960s.

Louie,

With respect, that is your opinion. No one else has complained about the eyes. You are the only one who has said a thing about them. My opinion is you need to adjust your monitor. Because your claim is is strictly the Bunk!

My monitor is adjusted with a Spyder 3 Elite, so it must be an issue on your end.