I don't like recolored old pics- lighthearted

Personally i quite like what you have shown but i guess it doesnt work for all photos.

It certainly makes a difference. I like to see them with colour but prefer the originals.
I once posted an old photo on a FB history page. It was one of me with two friends taken when I was 7 years old. Somebody kindly coloured it for me and repaired the damage. The only problem was she changed the skin tone of my Asian friend. 🙁

I know what you mean, CorneliaStreet

Interesting to look at, maybe, but the originals are best

Yeah, originals are better. There are good programs like Photoshop or Photoglory that do nice recoloring, but in most cases the originals look better. On the other hand, I remember a good post on Family tree saying that recoloring brings the pictures to their second life so... tastes differ, you see.

If people want to do it to their own photos, that’s up to them. I’m currently muttering darkly about someone who has copied old pictures of family members which I had scanned and uploaded to my family tree on Ancestry.com, and then coloured them. He/she could at least have asked.

I'm not struck on them ,and I really dont like anyone recolouring without asking me.Theres someone on one of my FB sites that does it a lot and some people get very annoyed about it .The original is how it was meant to be and lighting would have been adjusted to enhance the B /W so colouring it ruins the effect the photographer was aiming for .

I know assumptions can be made about colours from B&W photos, but how can anyone be sure that they've got it right? Maybe the lady in the photo was actually wearing a grey cardigan and red and white blouse.....

@geekesse oh, yeah, it would be nice of them to contact you first.

@Septimia YES! That's what I thought, too!

With the WW1 photos, colouring suddenly made those poor tired lads come to life for me. They looked like people I could pass in the street right now. It was quite striking.

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202007/medium-552155-they-shall-not-grow-old-horizontal-banner-png.png https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202007/medium-732802-maxresdefault.jpg

Jane 10. I agree. Did you see the ww1 film footage that was shown a couple of years ago? Amazing.

fiorentina51 I always meant to watch that but somehow didn't. Och!

Jane10 I think you can still find it on YouTube. Not only did they work magic with the imagery, they also worked out what the men were saying using lip reading techniques . Voices were then added, where possible using men with accents from areas they were likely to have been recruited.

No I don’t like old pics to be coloured they need to be as they are what next change the dress Changed to modern clothes
no from me they should stay as they were the clothes, the cars the buildings need to stay in context
Just because we can doesn’t mean we should

I absolutely agree with the end result of “They Shall Not Grow Old”!
How can you say black and white pictures are more authentic? The world never was black, white and grey.
If the technology is there to render films and pictures in colour (convincing colour, which is not the same as hand tinted B&W photographs,) why not use it?
Hand tinting has a charm of its own being of its period but nobody ever looked like that.
At the same time I am also not demeaning black and white photography as an art form in itself. Some of my DD’s most stunning wedding pics are in black and white.
So not sure what you are getting at OP.

I agree with MawB. My father’s adoptive father was a professional photographer and I am sure if he’d had access to colour photography he’d have used it!

We might as well say that photos are less authentic than paintings or daguerreotypes, if we feel colour is less authentic.