TO HELL WITH PHOTO COLORIZING!
I mean, who needs it – Anyway? Black & white photos look so antique, so quaint, so historically “accurate”. After all, the past was in Black & White, right? As rumor has it, our world has only been in color since Disney flipped a switch in the 1960s.
Enough already! These colorizing maniacs have got to stop tampering with history. They don’t know what color somebody was wearing back in 1895. They’re messing with History!
I’ve been colorizing photos since 2001, and laid the cornerstone on what is now American Photo Colorizing.com on July 4th of the following year. We virtually gave birth to (and raised) a sub-genre we named “Historic Photo Colorizing”. For many years, we were the only Studio & Gallery featuring colorized historical images. And since 2002, I’ve gotten an earful from Black & White purists. They come out from under bridges to wag their fingers, and lecture me on how we must forever preserve the integrity of the original photographic “blaaah-bla-blaaah-blaaaaah”. (ZZZzzzzzz…..)
Truth is, Great-Great-Grandpa’s world of the 1890s, looks far more like real life in the spectrum of color than it does in shades of gray – even if some colors are a colorizing artist’s personal choice.
American Photo Colorizing’s motto says it all: “We Don’t Live In A Black & White World . . . Neither Did They!” Our goal is to present “Realism” – as historically-accurate as possible. I try to create a “connection” between the person viewing the colorized photo – and the person in the photo.
Due to the nature of ‘color layers’, colorizations tend to be quite “flat”. Skin-tones appear very pastel and lifeless; lawns look like astro-turf or the 18th green at the Country Club; every blade of grass, every tree, shub, and other leafy things is the exact same shade of green. Life isn’t like that. It comes with variations and imperfections.
I get around that issue, by avoiding the “color layers” so popular with young photo colorizers. There’s more than one way to skin a black cat – or colorize one. My weapon of choice is a dino-software known as MGI PhotoSuite 4. Years ago, MGI sold out to Roxio, who changed PhotoSuite 4 from an excellent photo colorizing and editing program – to a basic Scrapbooking software.
Best of all, the colorized images I create on MGI PhotoSuite 4 match – or surpass the quality of anything I’ve seen done on PhotoShop or PhotoShop Elements. Best of all – You can still find copies of the MGI software in the original box on eBay and Amazon – for under $10.00. I recently paid $5.00 for a nice backup copy. Our ad below was created from start to finish on MGI PhotoSuite 4.
Photo colorizing has come a long way from its infant stages, where colorizations were so over-saturated, they resembled 1960s Psychedelic Posters. My goal, even in those early days, was to raise the bar on what could be accomplished with photo colorizing technology.
Colorizing artists will continue to grow in their ability to work the fine details of a scene. No matter what the detractors say – Colorization is the future for presenting the past to modern generations. End of sermon for today . . . . I look forward to your comments.
AND NOW . . . TODAY’S BLOG PHOTO.
The year is 1939. Looks like a nice morning to take a stroll through this wintery neighborhood in the village of Woodstock Vermont. Marion Post Wolcott’s black and white photos for the Farm Security Administration always yield wonderful colorized images. There’s just something about adding color to her photos that make 1939 seem like last year. And yet there were still cars with rumble seats, Coca Cola was only 5 cents, and someone, somewhere – maybe just down this street – has turned their radio to Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club or a tune by the Benny Goodman band. Woodstock was (and is) a charming ski resort village. So relax next to a warm fireplace. It’s December 1939, and America is still at peace.
American Photo Colorizing colorizes photos by commission, or you may purchase HD or Medium Def images from our online Gallery. Just CLICK the link to get started. http://americanphotocolorizing.com/
American Colorizing 