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unzercharlie t1_iw0cm85 wrote

I've done dozens of photo restorations and I am so against arbitrary colorization. It's bastardizing the source material. Sharpen it, fine. Reduce noise, fine. Correct imperfections, fine. Adding color to a photo like a coloring book is so pointless. I honestly don't understand why anyone wants to do it to a photo that means anything to them.

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Raxsah t1_iw0gh2n wrote

For some people, particularly the older generation, they only have black and white photos of loved ones to remember them by, but that's not an accurate representation of who that person was, because the world obviously doesn't exist in monochrome.

For those people I imagine it would be emotional to finally see an image of a loved one in colour, and not have to rely on memory alone which can fade over time

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unzercharlie t1_iw0ir1u wrote

I completely understand the sentiment, and I love the idea of someone seeing a loved one in color.

I did a restoration for my grandparents, but I was able to say "what color was that jacket?" and "what color was that dress?" and "what color was that truck?" They loved it and I loved doing it. I googled to find the original colors everywhere I could.

Colorizing something and just guessing the colors, or letting AI guess the colors, is something else entirely. I get doing it to learn colorization, or as a fun experiment, but I still believe it's the equivalent of a coloring book, and ruins a perfectly good black and white photo, which is a more accurate representation of history.

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JimJohnes t1_iw1iwp5 wrote

How can you "ruin" digital copy of a photo?

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u1tralord t1_iw0khhl wrote

Future iterations likely will have those features. This tech is just recently being made available to the public.

For now, you can just re-run it again for another variation

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brownowski t1_iw0x2b6 wrote

You can add that into the prompt given to the AI already. E.g. a red truck or woman in a yellow dress. Although, I have found you need to find a name for the colour that represents it pretty accurately, otherwise it might add a tint to the entire photo. You might get poor results just saying brown or red instead of burnt sienna or something more specific.

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blitz672 t1_iw3r92o wrote

So I did some tinkering with the word text and it was a bit better. What's funny is running the same original img Thu a 2nd yielded vastly different results.

Original color

https://imgur.com/z6KsLMJ.jpg

Black and white

https://imgur.com/C7bu2Yq.jpg

1st time Thu

https://imgur.com/j9a39gK.jpg

2nd

https://imgur.com/z6KsLMJ.jpg

Tweeked text prompt

https://imgur.com/C7bu2Yq.jpg

https://imgur.com/EjnZBwf.jpg https://imgur.com/NFTzuT5.jpg

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enilea t1_iw34pti wrote

>letting AI guess the colors

You can change the text prompt to choose different colors

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dutch1664 t1_iw0kkmx wrote

Not only does it give a better real-world feel - the world isn't black and white. It (this website OP posted) has brought out a lot more detail in the couple dozen photos I've run through it. Lots of things I noticed that I didn't before. So yes, this process definitely has value.

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gee_gra t1_iw2ddk0 wrote

For artistic photography you're absolutely correct, but for pics of some cunts gran from nineteen-dickety-two then colourising absolutely has value

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blitz672 t1_iw38irj wrote

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Psychological-Scar30 t1_iw3f2m1 wrote

People in a subreddit dedicated to cool technology react differently to a statement than people in a subreddit that seems completely oblivious to the fact that technology constantly improves and insist on making fun of it's current limitations and patting themselves on the back for how much better they are than an AI? Color me surprised.

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