Colorizing black and white photos was once an expensive and time-consuming process.
Not anymore!
With the evolution of AI and Machine Learning, you can colorize any old or new black and white image in a matter of seconds.
The success rate of such a process is not 100% but it often works well on most of the images.
There are a number of online services where you can upload and colorize your black and white images. Before we get into the list of these websites, let’s take a look at how this works.
How Colorizing Black & White Photos Work?
The basic principle of coloring Black and White photos online is almost identical.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
Machine learning uses a neural network and a training set to learn from Black and White photos and their colored counterpart.
Once the model has been fed with many photos (up to a million in some cases), it learns how to color other Black and White photos.
You can learn more about the process and how it works at http://richzhang.github.io/colorization/
Websites To Colorize Black & White Photos Online
Below is a list of Top 5 websites that use AI and machine learning to colorize your black and white photos.
1. Algorithmia Colorize Photos
Colorize Photos use deep learning to automatically colorize black and white photos.
It uses Algorithmia API and is as easy as uploading an image or pasting a URL.
Their Colorful Image Colorization algorithm is trained on a million images from the Imagenet dataset.
2. Colorize.cc
This is rather the most simple tool to colorize your old black and white photos.
Again, it uses deep learning to bring new life to your old images.
Colorize.cc can also process black and white videos from YouTube. The colorization process time is calculated by multiplying video length by 6.
For example, if the length of your video is 60 seconds, then the colorization time will be 60 x 6 = 360 seconds.
3. Image Colorizer
Image Colorizer is a tool that helps you to colorize old black and white images.
Its AI system is trained to recognize old images and choose the best strategies to restore the details.
Therefore, there is no need to colorize old photos manually
In an e-mail conversation with Shane Steven from Image Colorizer, he said –
“We created this online tool because we wanted to find a simpler way to colorize and restore old black and white photos, instead of using photoshop manually. We have tried several open-source methods but the results were not as good as we expected. Luckily, we know how to train AI to learn image colorization. We collected thousands of photos and feed the AI to learn the best strategy between colorized photos and black and white photos. After months, the results seem good.”
Image Colorizer is still a work in progress, however, the current system could provide impressive results.
4. Photomyne
Photomyne’s suite of apps is the world’s best for supporting your nostalgia.
They have developed a smart automatic process for turning your Black and White photos into vibrant colorful memories.
Photomyne’s B&W colorization app can be used in a browser and is also available as a downloadable app on both Android and iOS devices.
This application can also be used to fix and restore old and faded images. This article by THE NEW YORK TIMES explains it well.
5. Playback.fm
Colorize Photos by Playback.fm with the help of deep learning that uses a neural network and a training set of black and white photos and their colored counterpart breathes new life in your old images.
It uses a simple upload function to colorize images.
Since privacy is of utmost importance in any online activity, uploaded images are temporarily hosted on their secure server for around 10 minutes for processing.
Each temporary URL generated is a randomized string that is only shared with you so it can’t ever be discovered by anyone else.
Conclusion
Colorizing Black and White photos is an old process. Earlier it was done manually with the help of Photoshop or other image restoration apps.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have made everything so easy, all it takes is a click of a button to colorize black and white photos.
And the websites listed in this article are some of the best and most efficient resources to do so.
If you are familiar with any other B&W colorization tool that you think might be suitable for this list, let us know in the comment section below.
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