Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
The ethical dimensions of artificial intelligence (AI) image colourization were recently brought to public attention when several historical images were altered using digital algorithms.
Irish artist Matt Loughrey digitally colourized and added smiles to photos of tortured prisoners from Security Prison 21 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which was used by the Khmer Rouge from 1975-79. His photos were published in Vice and prompted outrage on Twitter.
Colorization artist Matt Loughrey recently came under fire for a serious “Photoshop crime.” He shared some of his work with Vice Asia, showing his colorized images of Cambodian genocide victims. But it was soon discovered that he added smiles to them, which caused quite a stir.
James Berridge of JBColourisation has already demonstrated his impressive restoration and colorization skills. In his recent project, he embarked on a demanding task to make a large chunk of US history more relatable to the 21st-century folks. He restored and colorized 26 presidential portraits. All of those photos that were photographed in black & white now have their restored, colored version.
After he finished the process, James shared a video that, for the first time, shows all US presidents in color. And in another video, he spoke more about his process, the challenges he faced, and why he decided to start this project in the first place.
We’ve seen some pretty epic examples of manual photo restoration and colorization. But there’s now a website that promises equally impressive results. MyHeritage uses neural networks to restore your old photos and give them color. And judging from the examples, it truly does a pretty good job for artificial intelligence.
Olga Shirnina, also known as Klimbim, is one of the leading colorization artists who gives new life to historic images. However, her work has been banned from Facebook and Instagram several times now. Since September last year, her accounts have been suspended multiple times for posting images that depict “dangerous organizations.”
Photo restoration and colorization gives new life and new dimension to damaged old photographs. A recent video from James Berridge of JBColourisation shows just how impressive this process can be. He used a heavily damaged diptych of mother and her baby from circa 1903, with the damage splitting the image apart. In his timelapse video, you can see how he fixed it and “reunited” the mother and her child after 116 years.
Hubble Space Telescope has been orbiting the Earth since 1990. For almost three decades, it has given us plenty of stunning, colorful images of space. But did you know that all of them started as black and white? This video from Vox reveals how scientists colorize Hubble photos of space. They can make them look as we’d see them with our eyes, but they also use other techniques that provide them with so much more than just beautiful pictures.
Colorization and restoration of old photos is a painstaking and time-consuming process, especially if you’re working with heavily damaged images. Computer vision team of Mail.ru Group has introduced an AI-powered tool that will make his process simpler and easier. They’ve even launched a website where you can test it out and restore the vintage photos from your old family album. Or any other vintage photos, if you prefer.
We have seen several AI-based colorizing tools so far, and colourise.sg is the latest addition to this bunch. While some other services like Algorithmia still need to improve, colourise.sg is capable of doing a fantastic job in only a matter of seconds.
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of World War I’s end, a documentary titled They Shall Not Grow Old has been released. Directed and produced by Peter Jackson, it contains footage you have never seen before, restored and colorized to add a new dimension to these striking shots.
In this video by BBC, you can hear about the painstaking process the crew went through and what it took to colorize the shots and create this amazing documentary.
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube.
His videos have over a hundred million views, have been extensively published by news outlets, and has even received recognition from a few film festivals, such as International Ocean Festival
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