Over the Christmas period I took the chance to explore Photoshop a little more, and played around with a few iimages, ie colourizing some B/W photos and I thought I would share the results.

Regards Chris

Very nice work, but may I ask why your using Photoshop and not one of the market leaders software in the recolorization process? With 'Recoloured' I can get a portrait finished in around 5 or 10 minutes with out messing around with layers.

Chris,

Nice work. More please

Superb, -should be published in book form, sure to be a best seller.
David

The results you have achieved are indeed impressive but I still think software intended for colorization would save you a lot of time. For example when colorizing a face very often Ive found that after selecting the correct flesh tone that other parts of the face such as eye brows need no attention as the software is intelligent enough to recognise them. Although you can import pallets into Photoshops much of this software now comes with pallets included for things like faces to brickwork. Maybe you prefer the replacer tool rather than drawing around objects? Horses for courses.

I think they are quite stunning.

We're so used to seeing the black and white photos (some of them can be very harrowing, probably because they're b&w). I think you've really "humanised" these pictures.

Any more - please?

Mabel

Superb results,but what a pity colour photography was not availiable in WW1,it would make it so much easier to record divisional signs and such like.

P.B.

Really good, please, more??

Andy

Chris

Fantastic photos. Please post any more you do.

Sue

Remarkable work, Chris. I have the feeling that your more laborious technique may achieve a more realistic result than a semi-automated specialist colorising program. Perhaps if you post one of your three - say the last one, in black and white, Yellow could work on it with his preferred colorising tool and let us see the result.

Mick

These are fab! well done Chris.

Soren

Chris
Absolutely Top Draw.
Glyn

great pictures Chris, thanks for sharing these.

Absolutely stunning photos Chris - scary in a lot of ways as it makes it so 'real', in black and white you can still feel removed from it all, almost surreal - but these just bring it all to life.

Really captures it for me.

Well done!!!!

ooooo nearly forgot to say ...................... THANK YOU!!!

Thank you Pighills.
I see your from my neck of the woods.

Regards
Chris

Now that is what I call a pleasant pass time. I have dozens of BW photos of my favorite Battalion sitting in my collection just crying out to be played with.
What version of Photoshop would I need, and how long to get the hang of the practice?

I did a photoshop course about five years ago, but cannot remember being shown that tool.

Hat off to you Chris.

Gareth

These are absolutely fantastic!
I think I would rate myself as an "advanced" photoshop user and although I have mostly concentrated on repair of damaged images I have tinkered with colouring and acheived nothing even approaching this quality. They really are exceptionally good, the best I have seen and superior to many of the examples in photoshop handbooks.
Thanks for posting them.
Chris

no idea about the sofware side of this, but the results are fantastic !

Mick D

they are better than the ones in the book WW1 in colour, the ones coloured for the series that is..they look so original and bring the b&w pics to life.. thanx for the hard work on them

These are absolutely fantastic, the best re-colourised photos i've ever seen, and almost look as if they were only taken yesterday with a modern camera. More, please!

This is top notch work. That looks fantastic and I agree, looks better than the vast majority of 'colourised' photos I have seen.

More, please more! Perhaps by country's forces?

Chris,
Absolutely fantastic stuff. As has been said they really do bring the scenes to life. Congratulations and well done. Looking foward to some more of your work.

Cheers
Chris

QUOTE: I see your from my neck of the woods. END QUOTE

Yup, certainly am!!

Love your website - one of the best I've seen, VERY envious of your abilities. I'm just starting part two of my web course, concentrating on CSS but I'm trying to twist my tutors arm to include databases for me. It was through your website I found a picture of my 3 x Great Uncle!

Chris:

Pighill's Post (20) was was I was, very badly, trying to say. The attention to detail is incredible and I'd love to see lots more - every thought of a career move?!

Mabel

Excellent. Well done and thanks for sharing them with us all.

Terry

A couple of studio shots, I'm afraid I don't know who they are but both were Argyll & Sutherlander's
Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Chris,

Just repeating what everyone else has said – truly amazing work. There can be something very remote about some of the old b&w photos. They can also make the subject feel like ancient history. Your re-colouring studies (a couple of them especially) really do make a big impact - and make you reconsider what you are looking at.

Maybe you should run a day's GWF re-colouring tutorial

All the best,

Stuart

Wow! I add my admiration to the other posts above. Very impressive work.

Mark

I shied away a bit from this thread as I have mixed feelings about colourising, especially when applied to b and w movies, but having at last clicked on it I am now gobsmacked.

brilliant work Chris, keep it up

cheers Martin B

Do you have the contacts to do a book, it would be fantastic.

Mick D

Chris, I'm really interested how you are able to get these amazing results. Is there any way of working out from black and white photos what the original colours were or is it just guess work? For example the rust on the metal in post 40 or the red in the picture on the wall in post 39 - are you just guessing what the original colours were or can you/photoshop some how work it out?

Great stuff.

Mark

Amazing pictures truly brings to life and dare i say makes it seem more real. Were used to seeing black n white photos/newsreels and imagining a far gone time but what you have done brings it all to life as though it was yesterday.
Keep up the good work and take up the suggestions of doing a book please!!!

Wayne

Very well done, Chris! I enjoyed those quite a lot~!

All the best,
Dan

Amazing work Chris. Keep at it.

Roger

Fantastic stuff! Please keep up the good work.

Gareth

Chris,

Just as a matter of interest, do you have any names or descriptions to go with the photos - or would the inclusion of this information go against copyright? As I said before, they are wonderful.

Mabel

Thank you very much for your comments.
Colourizing is as only as good as the quality of the original photos, so praise indeed to the photographer's who took these shots in the first place, sometimes under extreme conditions, with heavy equipment to lugg about.

Mark. Its all guess work really, I just try to imagine what things should look like colourwise, if they have been exposed to the elements for some time, and you can pick up clues on the original B/W images mud on boots uniforms etc.
I spent sometime, working in constuction and I'm well aware of how dirt/mud/water can find its way everywhere, so I think that must be somewhere in the back of my mind.

Mabel. I do have descriptions for the images so maybe I should add them, I will dig them out.

Regards
Chris.

Love this work - quite stunning results. Chris and I have just started attending a workshop on photoshop - first lesson was the healing tool and moving stuff, so motivated by your wonderful results, will keep going.
Would love to see any amount that you care to show us
Cheers
Shirley

Looking back at the pics with that in mind, Chris, the 'environmental' features (mud, rust, water, earth, etc) certainly do stand out as being uncannily realistic, and are perhaps one of the main reasons that your work is so exceptionally good. Is the b/w photo you posted really not good enough to work on? Shame if it isn't, as I'm sure the result would be stunning. Perhaps worth a go anyway ...?

These are realy excellent. Thank you very much for sharing them.

I agree that it is the environmental elements, and also the careful palette of colours which make these so effective. (I actually also think the two portraits are very very good too). The three I find least convincing (in posts 31, 32, and 39) all have large areas of sky/earth etc and they (to me) give the appearance of being "over uniform" in the colours here. This is the problem I see in most colouring of images and that Chris has avoided so cleverly in the others posted.

I do have a digital copy of "piping themselves back from the trenches" which was good enough for a 8x10" print.... but I can't find it! If (when) I do I will send it on.

Chris

Hi Chris,
I agree, you can add more definition in an enclosed area, like s trench, it allow's you to be able to add more contrast's.
sky can look to washed out and and the distant landscape to regular, I've been fiddling about trying to overcome this but the results so far, go to much the other way.

Regards
Chris

Of course colour photography such as autochromes was available during WW1 but was complex and not widely used. Nonetheless thee are some superb colour pics to be seen, particularly of French army subjects and of amazingly good quality. I've seen some modern prints from some of these autochrome negatives and they are truly impressive. I know they have been covered on past threads and you can find a selection at

http://www.mediatheque-patrimoine.culture....ochromes.html#2

Thank you, Martin – I was looking for that collection and couldn't find it. Very interesting to compare some of the fantastic French autochromes with Chris's colorised images – in particular his rendering of the rusty remains in his second pic against the rusting steam loco in the gallery of autochromes.

Chapeau, Chris ...!

On the same note as Martin, For those who are interested, the Sunday Times T.V magazine list a new series "exploring Abert Kahn's photographic archive of the 1914-18 conflict "
The programme is called The Great War In Colour and is to be screened on BB2 at 7.00pm on Monday 21st Jan.

Regards
Chris

Chris CPGW

Having done a few colourisations myself (using Photoshop), can only add to the praise regarding your results. For me, the sky has also proved an issue as its often faded out on the B&W originals. Keep up the good work.

BernardP

Chris, that's just brilliant!

To echo everyone else these are superb and refreshes all those old photographs you see in book after book. In colour it seem to bring out more of the details, adding that je ne sais pas (as Dell boy would say).

This has inspired me do install my CS3, which I have been promising to do since Christmas.

Lets see more ...

Just to add to the tributes - excellent work!

The word 'immediacy' somehow comes to mind. They look recent, almost re-enactment like.

Splendid.

Thanks

Ian

These photos are really fantastic, if you put them in a book I'll buy it!


Barbara..