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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.


 
 
I’m still excited when I find another older black & white photo that I can colorize.

 
 
Written by: Arnie Lee
 
 


 
 

Wearing Many Hats

27th March 2023

Turning on the Studio Lights

 

It’s been a couple of years since I’ve used my electronic studio strobes. I wasn’t even sure that they were still working. So I asked my favorite lovely model if she would pose for a few photos and she kindly accepted.
 
On this day, the outside sky was overcast there wasn’t much light coming through the windows. So I went to work moving the lights into position for the quick shooting session. I was using only two lights – one main light, slightly to the left of the subject and about ten feet away and a second light positioned low and the the right of the subject to illuminate the background.
 
Here are a few of the photos from this session.
 
To see more detail of the lighting and coloring, click on any of the images.















The above photo was taken at a different time using an IR (infrared camera that removes all of the color.


 

There was nothing exciting about my quick session, but I did enjoy working with a model who made these couple of hats look nicely perched.

Written by: Arnie Lee
 
 
 

The early days of picturetaking had me carefully setting up to take that spectacular photo, sending the film off to develop and patiently waiting for the prints come back from the photofinisher. Unexpectedly I experienced much disappointment when I looked through the returned pictures only to see my favorite subject as a blurred image. The cause may have been my sloppy focusing or me shaking the camera while using a slow shutter speed. No matter, the result was a missed opportunity.

When I review my large collection of photos – especially the older ones – I’m amazed how many aren’t “tack sharp”. Before the advent of autofocus cameras, we had to rely on manual focus techniques to keep the lens properly set. And before the advent of higher ISO film, we had to rely on stabilizing techniques to minimize the camera shake. In my younger days I must have been a photographer with sloppy habits and this explains why I have a bunch of blurry photos from back then.

A few weeks ago I learned of a software product that supposedly “fixed” blurred photos. After reading a couple of reviews of Topaz AI I decided to give it a try. In addition to sharpening images it can reduce image noise and can boost image resolution.

Topaz AI can be used by itself (standalone) or as a plug-in (helper) for Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop. I have used it as a standalone but most often as a plug-in for Lightroom.

Here’s a quick look at how Topaz AI can make those blurry pictures go away.


 
Below is a photograph taken with film in the early 1970’s using a manual focus camera. You can see that the original image on the left is not quite in focus.
 


Here I’ve started Topaz AI to process the original image. This is the Topaz AI screen. On the left half of the split screen is the original image while the right half shows the improved image. On the far right is the control panel. By default the software analyzes the image and applies the changes that it believes will improve its appearance.


 

This is an enlargement of the Topaz AI control panel.

At the top is a thumbnail of the original image. Move the thumbnail rectangle to view different parts of the original image.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

In this case Topaz has used its Autopilot settings to find a subject’s face in the original image, apply medium noise reduction and sharpen the subject in the image. You can override these settings if you do not care the resulting changes.
 
 
 
 
 
 

You can see that the buttons to Remove Noise, Sharpen and Recover Faces have already been activated (blue) but the Enhanced Resolution has not been activated (grey).

If you want to increase the resolution of the original image (Upscale), you can do so by selecting 1X, 2X, 3X, 4X or Max. You might use this if you’d like to make a poster size enlargement from your original image.

I did not increase the image resolution.

The dimensions of the resulting image are displayed below the enhance resolution choices.
 
 
 
 
Making changes to the settings are not permanent until the image is saved so you can make various adjustments until you achieve results that are favorable to you.


Here are portions of the original and “fixed” versions of the image.
 



original image – click to enlarge

image processed with Topaz AI (click to enlarge
Clearly you can see that Topaz AI has done a remarkable job in removing the cause of the bad focus in original image.
 



Next is a second image that suffered from focus blur caused by my rush to capture the bighorn sheep before it got away. The original was taken in May 2022 using a digital camera:
 

You can see that Topaz AI automatically applied the Remove Noise and Sharpen features to the original image. I did not need to use Enhance Resolution.


Below are portions of the original and improved images of the bighorn sheep.
 


original image (click to enlarge)

image processed with Topaz AI (click to enlarge)
 
Without any changes to the Topaz AI settings this software has produced an amazing image. It has saved another one of my photos from the “throwaway” pile.
 



 
I’m impressed Photo AI’s ability to fix the few dozen blurred images that I’ve thrown at it over the past few weeks. But what’s just as impressive is how easy this software is to use. So far it’s lived up to the AI that is part of its name.
 



 
For those of you who may be interested in this software, you can get a free trial version for either Mac or Windows personal computers. Visit Topaz Labs and look for the Photo AI package.

 
 
 

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