Why do people want photographs restoring and colouring?

[Nanna52]

My first venture onto the restoration board was to get a photo of a cousin killed at Paschendaele cleaned so that I could include it with his story on the in Memorium pages.  I felt it was the least I could do considering his sacrifice.

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=694328.9

Later I found a creased photo of my mother as a toddler with her mother.  As I never knew my grandmother having it cleaned, decreased and coloured brought her to life.  The hardest thing I found was when someone called her a poppet.  That's the last way I would describe my mother. 

[McGroger]

This is a picture of my great grandfather. It is part of a photo that became my first restore, a little over 12 months ago.

If it wasn’t for this restore, my own great-grandchildren would - barely 200 years after the photo was originally taken -  inherit something like the last image in the top row - if the photo still exists by then.

But now, I know - and they will know - almost exactly what he looked like.

Peter

[Mart 'n' Al]

This is my first return to Rootschat since I posted the original question. I am amazed at the response. It is clear that everybody has their own view and there have certainly been some interesting comments. I still find the whole concept strange, but not from an artistic point. I am very unartistic and this is probably why I have had so little experience of graphics packages despite having worked in IT for 40 years., (and I would welcome anyone who wants to try and make my profile picture look suitably dated!) MartynS mentioned colourizing old Beatles films. Now I am a fan of The Beatles very very early days and I love those grainy photographs, scratchy records and flickery films. I prefer their early unproduced work much more than the later George Martin influenced music.

The only exception I can think of to my views, is to stop photographs deteriorating any further. I have old photographs from the 70s taken on my first cheap camera and they seem to have lost the blue colour so they all look a bit orange. I must admit that I have dabbled with increasing the blue on them.

I hope this thread stays open and more and more people can add their views.

Martin

[Mart 'n' Al]

Ironically, in view of the fact that I started this thread I came across this article today.

"Google Photos will soon be able to colorize old photos."

https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/8/17320296/google-photos-update-new-features-release-date-google-io-2018

I wouldn't dare try it myself!

Martin

[Greensleeves]

There are a number of ways of looking at old photographs.  One is as artefacts, historical pieces, rather like pottery shards which should be preserved in their original form with the minimum intervention.  Another is, when the photograph is of someone important to you, as a memento of that person, regardless of whether you were able to meet them, or if they died before you were born or were cognisant of their existence.

The joy of restoring and colouring old photographic images is that the originals remain untouched, but we restorers/colourists are able to bring to life those people who are now gone from us.  Repairing the damages of age and poor storage is a very skilled job,  and we are fortunate indeed on RC to have a number of very skilled restorers, so that photographic images can be cured of their blemishes, and some idea of the true, original image can be seen.  With the colouring, to my mind (and I have to, in fairness, declare an interest here) my feelings are that by colouring these old images, we in some small way try to bring back those long-dead people to life, so that we can glimpse back into the past and see for ourselves what our great-grandparents or great-great-aunts might have really looked like. 

Photo restoration and colouring is just another way of embracing and rejoicing in the things we have been gifted from the past.  There are no objections - as far as I know - to damaged paintings being restored, or broken china being repaired.  So why should we not spend our time restoring and colouring old photographs, and rejoicing in the heritage we have been bequeathed.  And one of the most important things is that the originals remain as originals; these restores and colourings are interpretations of the original, and help us to reach back and embrace the past.

[Mike Morrell (NL)]

I'm very late to this party - I missed it first time around. First of all, what a great question Martin! I've enjoyed reading the responses.

FWIW (as a restorer), I think restoration has value in two main ways:
- restoring the photo to how it might originally have looked before the ravages of time: fading through exposure to sunlight, fungus spots, etc.
- removing major cracks, spots, etc. that visually prevent people from really viewing the photo: they focus primarily on the damage

I sympathise with your point about 'erasing the history'. This is all volunteer stuff but in a commercial relationship, my guess would be that 'the restorer' would agree what 'damage' to correct and what damage to 'leave in'.


I think that colourisation is completely unrelated to restoration though it's usually done by the same folks. Personally, I prefer restored sepia or B&W photos as they were taken. But I occasionally do colourised versions too. To be honest, I have no idea why people ask for B&W photos to be 'colourised'. I just know that they do.

Mike

[MartynS]

I think that colourisation is completely unrelated to restoration though it's usually done by the same folks. Personally, I prefer restored sepia or B&W photos as they were taken. But I occasionally do colourised versions too. To be honest, I have no idea why people ask for B&W photos to be 'colourised'. I just know that they do.

99% of tutorials out there will say "Repair and restore the BW photo first before colouring" - as you say they are usually deemed to be be treated as separate processes - however I always colour and repair/retouch all at the same time - as it helps to blend base colours into the photo. Also it helps me to decide what to do next to make the segment of colour in a good condition to then be able to retouch.

For example if a face is badly damaged i prefer to add skin base tones to the BW with all of its blemish/marks/disfigurements/noise/cracks/blotches so that i can keep consistency to the retouch of the skin tones and the original BW layer. As long as new layers are created for each body part or scene section of the photo being restored and coloured then you can easily undo whats been done....you can even add new texture by making the opacity of layers much less thus slowly rebuilding the face/scene with more aggressive or subtle changes per layer. Adding the various colour tones to each layer means you can control the colour process at the same time or in sync with changes you might want to make to the underlying original BW base layer.

For those that don't colour and only do BW restorations - Colouring requires a much higher range of skills from an artist. This intrigue to want to colour is i would suggest is a reason for people to want to reach the next level in terms of "ART" in the idea of restoration. So restorers become artists through the process....

It is a very interesting subject with the possibilities of websites/APKs/APIs all vying to auto colour old photos - In time they will do a reasonable job, but for now there is nothing better than manual control from a human. For example you will never get a robot or AI to reproduce an old master painting ? and if they did if you knew it was done by a robot the value would drop as it is a reproduction.....thus to know and have proof that a human restored or coloured a photo would be more valuable in terms of the process than a website auto colouring.....would it stop people using an auto colour bot ? Nope, but where is the fun and self development - it is gone..... AI/BOTS and other automated systems will only make calls to sheeple (sheep+people) who will no doubt follow the automated trends because of convenience - artists and people who take pride in work will continue to do so and continue to spend a few hours with the joy and satisfaction of restoring and colouring that old photo :-)

Also i only got into photo restorations and colouring because when i moved from UK to Europe I had no immediate work, so had to come up with something to generate a passive income. I decided i wanted to be a graphic designer. Work from home etc.... Graphic design comes in many forms just like restoration of photos - It is impossible to be good at it all....So the hobbie of restoration helped me develop my eye for colours and interpret fine details plus the construction and reconstruction of body forms, scenes and such things. There is always a reason to want to do something outside of the normal.

[MartynS]

Taking my last post in another direction - Be the one percent    don't follow the general rules or tutorials - Self development is usually a good motivation for any skilled person or artist to do what they do. I say aim to be the "1%" not the "99%" - Leonardo Da Vinci or any other person from history or any person skilled in their job wants to be unique/odd/different....So i say it is okay to go against the grain with colour....and then strive to be different in that method to aim to become a specialist.


Automated tools cant be the 1% because these tools will only serve the masses and 99% of the time will be good at auto processing repair of BW or colouring a BW photo. Humans will win every time in anything due to attention to detail and manual intelligence. AI will be a standardized standard - A human will make the difference obvious in the 1%.

[Greensleeves]

"For those that don't colour and only do BW restorations - Colouring requires a much higher range of skills from an artist. This intrigue to want to colour is i would suggest is a reason for people to want to reach the next level in terms of "ART" in the idea of restoration. So restorers become artists through the process.... MartynS"

I am an artist in 'real life', working with acrylics on canvas, so I possibly approach restoration/colouring from another direction, in that I am interpreting an image when I colour, in the same way as I look at a street-scape (for example)  and interpret that.  Restoration - which I always do first - requires different skills and, of course, I end up with a restoration and a colourisation.  I do feel that with restoration the original image should be afforded respect and that it is not necessary to remove every blemish, but that is merely my opinion.   

I can totally understand why people like to see coloured representations of their ancestors - the same reason why coloured photography remains so popular: it is a closer representation of the person in front of the camera.  It's another way of connecting with the past, and basically the same reason we do our family trees.