Relating to the past can be difficult when all you have to look at are faded black and white photos that feel like they are from another planet. The mind thinks and remembers in color, meaning a color photograph is much easier to connect with than a black and white photo.
Thanks to film colorization historic photos restored to full color bring new life to history. Film colorization is a process that can be conducted digitally or by hand. Prior to the 1970s basic colorization was possible but required carefully painting color onto film stock.
The invention of the computer has completely altered the way we restore historic photos thanks to digital colorization. While the process is still time-consuming it is very much worth the hard work.
Research is conducted to match colors as closely to how they really looked as possible, but in some cases artists must guess which colors to use.
|
| 18 year old Russian girl being liberated from Dachau, (April 1945) |
 |
| Romanov sisters, Grand Duchesses Maria, Olga, Anastasia, and Tatiana, (1910) |
 |
| Manhattan at sunset from the George Washington Bridge, (December 1936) |
|
| “Here lies an unknown English Lieutenant killed in air combat” – Western Desert, Egypt, (1941) |
 |
| Mary Winsor, founder and president of the Limited Suffrage Society, holds a sign during the American suffrage movement; (ca. 1910s) |
 |
| Licking blocks of ice during the heat wave, NYC, (1912) |
 |
| Three soldiers looking for the enemy from the shelter of a rubble-filled shed somewhere in France during World War I, (1917) |
 |
| Two girls, Jean and Charlotte Potter, sit at the beach with their dog, (ca. 1910-1915) |
 |
| Edson Arantes do Nascimento, Soccer legend Pele. Sao Paulo, (1958) |
 |
| An Ojibwe Native American spearfishing, Minnesota, (1908) |
 |
| Jewish women and children arriving at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, Poland, (1944) |
 |
| Duck Dynasty, (1926) |
 |
| Coney Island, New York, (ca. 1905) |
 |
| Film and fashion icon Audrey Hepburn, (ca. 1953) |
 |
| A small child with a puppy – Point Pleasant,West Virginia, (May 1943) |
 |
| Flipping Burgers, (1938) |
 |
| College students pile into a Volkswagen Beetle, (c. 1965) |
 |
| Baseball legend “Babe” Ruth, (ca. 1920), the year he joined the New York Yankees. |
 |
| War Paint, (1944) |
 |
| Cab stand in Madison Square Park, New York, (ca 1900) |
 |
| Unemployed men outside Al Capone’s soup kitchen in Chicago during the Great Depression, (1931) |
 |
| World War II propaganda posters in Port Washington, New York, (1942) |
 |
| Marilyn Monroe’s USO performance, (February 1954) |
 |
| Operation Overlord, (June 1944) |
 |
| Coca-Cola vending point at the Helsinki Summer Olympics – (July 18, 1952) |
 |
| Miss America, 1924 – Ruth Malcomson. |
 |
| Sidewheeler Tashmoo leaving wharf in Detroit, (ca 1901) |
 |
| Harlem News Boy, (1943) |
 |
| British tattoo artist George Burchett, the King of Tattooists, (ca 1930) |
 |
| Titanic sinks on April 15, 1912. Newspaper boy Ned Parfett sells copies of the evening paper bearing news of the disaster. |
 |
| Troops crouch inside a LCVP landing craft, just before landing on “Omaha” Beach on “D-Day”, (6 June 1944) |
 |
| Clam seller on Mulberry Bend, New York, (ca 1900) |
 |
| A German soldier after being captured by American troops near Nicosia, (1943) |
 |
| Women in witch costumes, (1875) |
 |
| A Samurai, (1881) |
 |
| The Flatiron Building, (1905) |
 |
| Inventor and physicist Thomas Alva Edison. New Jersey, (1911) |
 |
| Daredevil, (1917) |
 |
| A Nihang Bodyguard, (c.1865) |
 |
| Curb Market in NYC, (ca 1900) |
 |
| Observer on Iwo Jima, (1945) |
|
| Crowded Bunks in the Prison Camp at Buchenwald, (April 16, 1945) |
(via Imgur)