Black & White to Color – Instantly

Not Quite Magic, But Amazing Nonetheless

Like many photography buffs, I subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud that provides me a set of applications for editing my images. For all of the years that I’ve been using the computer for photography, I’ve never been a regular user of Photoshop. While I’ve used it on occasion I’ve instead relied on the company’s younger offspring Lightroom for most of my image editing.

As a subscriber I receive regular electronically delivered newsletters about Creative Cloud. A few weeks ago one of the articles drew my interest – colorizing black and white images.

Those of us who grew up taking pictures in the 1950s and 1960s have a large stash of black and white photos – and I have my share. I clicked on the article to find out more about this magical process.

The process involved using one of Photoshop’s built-in filters. Being a Photoshop novice I was unfamiliar with these filters so I had to dig deeper.

Well it turns out that I didn’t have to dig very much. The newsletter explained that the only thing I needed to do was to choose “Neural Filter” from Photoshop’s top menu and then click the “Colorize” button. Instantly – yes instantly – the black and white photo was converted to a color version.

The images are colorized using a best guess model that Adobe employs. The processing is not perfect but most of the images that I tried turned out acceptable. The few inconsistencies that I noticed did not detract from the overall results. And a few of the colorized images exceeded my expectations.

Below are a few of the B&W’s – including some of my favorites – that I was anxious to try.

Click on any image to see more detail.
A photo of my Grandmother and two uncles taken in the 1950s.	The colorized version fails to maintain consistent color of the suits.

A high school photo of a student from the 1960s.	The colorized version is good except the student didn’t use lipstick.

Writer William F Buckley lecturing at the Univ of Michigan in 1969.	Above you will notice that the background does not maintain the same color.

Hockey star Tim Horton sitting in the penalty box at Madison Square Garden about 1964.	The color processing chose blue for Tim’s jersey which happens to be the color of the Toronto Maple Leaf uniform. Good guess.

Singer Ron Townsend of the Fifth Dimension performing in Ann Arbor in 1970	An amazing transformation. I don’t know if the colors are accurate to his 1970’s outfit but they appear authentic.

A snapshot of my wife while we were enjoying nature and the outdoors in 1969.	Photoshop’s choice of colors is less important to me than the warm feeling that I receive from the colorized photo.