colorizing black and white pictures

Is there a good program I ca get to colorize black and white programs. One that doesn't require me to upload any pictures or buy a monthly subscription. I don't mind buying the program. The one I'm using has poor results, bit I possibly not using it correctly.

I'm a graphic designer, so I'm going to tell you flat out, this process will not be easy regardless if you want a free program or paid.
Since the photos are in black and white, you're going to have to pick the color for each area you want to colorize.
See my point?
If you had color photos and wanted to make them black and white, that's a very easy process.
Good luck.

Not that you would spend the money on an Adobe Photoshop subscription, but colorizing is quite easy these days. Photoshop has colorize AI filter. (Neural Filters)
You obviously already know about the on-line sites where you can upload and colorize an image (quite quickly) I am not a fan of that either.

You could try out WinXVideo AI
There is currently a special for a lifetime license. Actually a great deal. (57% off) = US$30
There is a trial and possibly a learning curb. I think the trial allows 5 images.
It can absolutely convert Black & White to Colour

All the features belong to the same App (Winxvideo ai) but you can choose between image ai and video ai on the main page of the software. So basically, you’re getting a lot in the app that you’re wanting to convert photos to colour with.
Here is a brief guide

To colorize, basically:

• Open WinXvideo AI: Launch the software and navigate to the "Image AI" section.
  
  
• Add Images: Drag and drop or import your black and white photos.
  
  
• Enable Colorization: Check the box labeled "Colorizing Monochrome Image".
  
  
• Choose AI Model and Settings: Select the desired AI model and adjust scaling settings if needed.
  
  
• Run the Process: Click "RUN" to initiate the colorization process.
  
  
• Save the Colorized Photo: Choose the desired output format (JPG or PNG) and save the colorized image.

No, it kind of looks like “That Guy” but it isn’t

In the above image, you’ll notice that you can also enlarge the image, as well as remove dust/scratches & fix out of focus images when enhancing, via Ai.


An example: YouTube, starts at 3min 40sec (Colorize & enhance)

I've played around with colorization in Affinity a bit..., however, I'm quite a novice at it!
You need good tutorials and a lot of patience!

Affinity Suite is very reasonably priced, and, you can try it free for 6 months!

A free option alternative to photoshop is "Gimp" which is open source.
Totally free and works just as good as photoshop, but again, you'll have to learn how to use it.

I’ve colorized old family (1930s) photos and after trying many online sources, Photoshop is the best. Tedious process, but much better finished process.

3gsd's said:

Is there a good program I ca get to colorize black and white programs. One that doesn't require me to upload any pictures or buy a monthly subscription. I don't mind buying the program. The one I'm using has poor results, bit I possibly not using it correctly.

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Hi there
the main problem with B&W colorisation (or even printing really good quality B&W pics) is that White->Black covers an analog scale of almost an infinite number of gradations. Any sort of modern colour or digitisation - even the best quality digital colour has a very limited number of pixels compared with Analog true black and white. Usually Red, green, blue or Red green Yellow are used for digital colour - and the human eye is fine with that at most resolutions people have at home or on print (less than A3* size). Going to A2 and bigger it's a problem unless you get quite expensive professional studio programs.

However provided you get a decent scan of your black and white picture Photoshop does a reasonable job - you must get the best possible B&W scan quality though that you can. The Gimp (free) also does a reasonable job too -- but again get the best possible quality B&W scan.

If you've still got the B&W negatives - things like the old Agfa negative / 35MM slide scanner yield quite good results. You might be able to source a used scanner on ebay etc.

For printing - often printers add cyan to mix when printing B&W to give a better rendering.

As an aside - I'm not really a fan of colourisation -- old B&W pics have a charm of their own and just imagine how pics of the great Ansel Adams would be ruined if his classic pics of N.California were in colour !!!!



jimbo

Thanks everyone. I'll try and see how they turn out.

I tried a couple of pictures asking ChatGPT/4o to colorize them, here is one of a man. You can say things too like "Can you make his skin less orange?", or whatever.

Would this help you?

Awalt said:

I tried a couple of pictures asking ChatGPT/4o to colorize them, here is one of a man. You can say things too like "Can you make his skin less orange?", or whatever.

Would this help you?

View attachment 129907 View attachment 129909

Click to expand...

That is an outstanding result saving many hours of masking and colouring using photoshop,

Steve C said:

That is an outstanding result saving many hours of masking and colouring using photoshop,

Click to expand...

Unlike many on this Forum who seem to hate the whole idea of A.I i'm greatly in favour of it. OK there will be some sort of transitional pain as traditional jobs disappear and new ones (that Humans can do better) are created and skill sets learned but history shows that every technological advance has in fact created zillions more jobs than the traditional ones had previously and usually with better pay and conditions.

It's no co-incidence that the most technologically advanced nations are the wealthiest (although Human politicians have a lot to answer for in that much of this new wealth is rather unevenly divided - and I'm no "soft leftie" either!!).

Even sophisticated surgery - as well as totally new procedures can be done via A.I and robotics --this type of stuff previously would have required hours of surgeons time, more usage of scarce hospital facilities and outcomes far less certain for the patients..

I've saved literally hours or even days of work at times just with COPILOT and EXCEL - while my preference in the previous post is for the original photo the AI result is very good indeed (thanks @Awalt for posting -- although you could get much better resolution on the B&W image of course !!! --but that again depends on monitors which themselves being digital have the same problem with nr of pixels (RGB / RYB).

Cheers
jimbo