This week, I discovered an artificial intelligence engine online which can be used to colorize black and white photos! All you have to do is upload an image, let the AI work on it, and it will produce the cloud's best efforts at a colorized image. It's really amazing! I decided to take some old pictures from my blog's previous photo galleries and run them through the AI program.
All of these pictures were shot on black and white film. They were not digitally desaturated, so there was no image data for the computer to find within the file. All of these pictures were genuinely in black and white.
Colorizing a black and white photo gives a really unique result that is different from shooting in color. It looks very old-fashioned - like an old hand-colorized image printed in an encyclopedia. While some didn't turn out all that great, I'm overall super impressed with the results! Here are a few of my favorites!
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| A view of Bangkok from atop the Golden Mount at Wat Saket. |
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| Haw Phra Bang, the most important Buddhist temple in Laos, on the grounds of the former Royal Palace (today the National Museum). |
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| Wat Saket, the Temple of the Golden Mount. |
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| A collection of Buddhist statues in glittering gold. |
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| One of my very first photos shot in Japan. I've always really liked this double-exposure. While neither the image or the colorization are great, for some reason, I still quite like it. |
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The ancient Lanna-style chedi at Wat Chiangman in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
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| Trấn Quốc Pagoda - Hanoi's oldest Buddhist temple. This picture didn't turn out that well. The ground, which was really made of paving stones, was turned green. Here, it looks like Astroturf! The AI seems to do really well with foliage, but not so great when there are lots of colors to guess at, such as on these Vietnamese prayer flags. |
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| A monk walking walking with an umbrella under the bright sun at Vat Mai, the largest and most ornate temples in Luang Prabang, Laos. This one didn't turn out so great - the monk's robes were colored to be a dark, rich indigo - but I still like it. The off-colored image give it an otherworldly feel. |
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| The Imperial Purple City in Hue, Vietnam - once the residence of the Imerial Family. |
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| The Silver Pagoda at the Royal Palace, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. |
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| A collection of golden Buddhas in Luang Prabang, Laos. The dark shadows and faded gold give it an ancient and slightly spooky feel. |
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| The Loha Prasat, or Iron Castle, at a monastery in Bangkok. |
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| The Erawan Shrine, Bangkok, Thailand. The marigolds were totally desaturated, but the glittering golden shrine looks even more golden than in real life! |
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| One of my favorites - an early morning view from the peak of Luang Prabang's most sacred mountain, Laos. AI is especially good at colorizing scenery. |
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