Brilliant or sacrilege?

[Peru Bob]

Colorizing history:

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/entertainment-arts-40523826/the-colourist-changing-the-appearance-of-hist...

[davescm]

Personally I like it - particularly if it is done well.

Let's face it hand colouring has been going on for years - long before digital.

Dave

[Trevor.Dennis]

We have some hand coloured prints in the family albums.  They have a sort of pastel tint, but they are quite effective.

Wikipedia has an entry on it.

Hand-colouring of photographs - Wikipedia

With the right subject, the results can be stunning.  I wish these were mine. 😞  My Chris is in the UK again at the moment.  Perhaps I'll surprise here when she gets back.

[davescm]

Very nice Trevor

Dave

[Szalam]

I think it really helps history feel real.

That image of Lewis Powell looks for all the world like a photo shoot for some fashion brand.

Maybe for one of those sites selling overpriced watches and cuffs...

[Brad Lawryk]

I love well done colourized images. I think some times an image has better feel and emotion if left alone, but for the most part unless the image was intended to be shot in B and W originally, i think the colour brings out so much more.

[Nancy OShea]

I recently watched a colorized version of the late George Romero's classic flesh-eating zombie flick, "Night of the Living Dead."   Even though Romero had supervised & approved the colorization,  I think the film lost something.  For me, it was more terrifying in it's original B&W format. 

[Chuck Uebele]

If it's done well and on images at a time that there was no color photography, then I think it's interesting. Color for the sake of color - not so much. I had a conversation with my former yearbook teacher from high school. We were talking about how all the yearbooks are color now, while, when I attended high school, only a very limited section was in color. We both felt that a lot of the impact is lost on the new books. So much color that it gets overwhelming. Plus the impact of the image seems to be diminished, as you're noticing the colors rather than the action or interaction of the people in the photos.

[stephenseagull]

who objects to colorizing historical / documentary photos?

Maybe I can see the reasoning with the parallel of old movies; I think it's questionable to colorize films, but I think of them as creative artwork vs documentary products. In both cases preserving the original intention is serviced in different ways. In the case of art, we owe the artist the preservation of their original work. In the case of a documentarian, I would argue that their intention (most of the time) is to capture a real place / time / people and try to preserve that history forever, as accurately as possible, or at least expressively as possible, conveying a sense of meaning from that moment in time.

If I made a documentary film, and in the future it could be converted into 3D immersive VR, I would probably not object.

[Peru Bob]

I don't really have an opinion on the matter. I just thought it would be an interesting topic of discussion.

I am surprised, however, that nobody had stated an opinion that B&W is more "artistic."

[Szalam]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Peru+Bob  wrote

I am surprised, however, that nobody had stated an opinion that B&W is more "artistic."

It's artistic if the photographer/cinematographer made the choice to shoot it that way. If somebody didn't have a choice, than the lack of color itself is not artistic.

I do like black and white photography. It forces you to focus more on the texture, shapes, and overall content of an image, but it isn't intrinsically more artistic. Just like painting with blacks and greys isn't more artistic than painting with colors, so it is with photography.

[gener7]

I don't think I can post this here, but here is a classic Calvin and Hobbes comic strip apropos to this topic.

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for Nov 9, 2014 | Read Comic Strips at GoComics.com

[stephenseagull]