
Returning True Color to B&W Photos - kaivi
http://www.solargreencolor.com/
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leni536
I call bullshit. How would it be possible? I have two bets how this can
remotely work:

1\. They use some newly discovered, color dependent property of original
negatives, but the following quote debunkes that:

> If you have a ready-made files of black and white image or video, color
> recovery process will be much faster.

2\. They use machine learning.

Well if they use machine learning then they just teach the computer how to do
colorization and produce plausible results. It's not retrieving the original
colors. It could be still a good idea though.

~~~
WalterBright
The people over on reddit's colorizedhistory subreddit do such a marvelous
job. If it were applied to film, it would be fantastic. Of course, it's too
hard to do every frame. But perhaps an artist could color one frame of each
scene, and software + machine learning can deduce the coloring of the rest of
the frames of that scene.

~~~
jacquesm
You could do keyframes and then in-beteween. If it is the same scene then use
the previous keyframe as a guide. That should speed it up considerably.

~~~
WalterBright
I suppose the process would be analogous to and as labor intensive as the
recent conversions of older movies to 3D, i.e. practical for many movies.

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nmeofthestate
It's hard to find an actual explanation for the process on the site, after a
bit of rummaging this is the closest I could get:
[http://i.imgur.com/YsbKHg1.gif](http://i.imgur.com/YsbKHg1.gif)

Still, it's a surprise to discover that changing a photo to black and white is
a lossless operation that can be reversed.

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WalterBright
It'd be nice to have a description of how it works, but the site's explanation
is vague to the point of nonexistence.

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danieltillett
Walter if they explained how it worked then the gullible wouldn't buy.

~~~
lucozade
You have so little faith in the power of gullibility [1]

[1]
[http://www.yoyodyneindustries.com/inductions/beacon_inductio...](http://www.yoyodyneindustries.com/inductions/beacon_inductions.html)

~~~
danieltillett
Love this. The legal stuff is a classic [1].

1\.
[http://www.yoyodyneindustries.com/disclaimer.html](http://www.yoyodyneindustries.com/disclaimer.html)

~~~
lucozade
I wonder how you go about proving that it isn't a sufficiently good Alpha-
Theta reinforcer?

I think I'll get one of the junior chaps to look into that once they've bought
the tartan paint that I asked for.

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ucaetano
Wait, how did they find the original color of a fake picture (the giant
grasshopper, or "gracehopper" as they call)?

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jeremyswank
I don't actually believe that Carole Lombard was quite that pink in real life.

