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Photography experts: b/w photo to color?

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NutmegCT

NutmegCT

Great Pumpkin
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I have a 1938 photo (black and white) of an airplane (V-156) at the Paris Air Show.

Is there any way to determine the colors of the aircraft?

I'm thinking something like ... I know the color of X (for example, the gendarme's cap, the Pratt/Whitney logo, the Garde Republicaine uniform, the propellor, etc.). Is there a magic bit of software that will let me back-trace the colors of the plane, or even the entire photo?

Thanks.
Tom
 
As far as I know there is no magic software that will tell you the colors, so matching different shades of gray from known colors is the only way to do it.

But, here's a wrinkle-was the original on ortho- or panchromatic film? Because ortho isn't sensitive to the red wavelength, so anything that's red will be rendered black, and shades will be different shades compared to panchromatic (which is sensitive to all wavelengths).

Somewhere I have a book about WW2 airplanes that has a small section on this exact problem, since orthocrhomatic film was still popular for use in "box" types of cameras. The differences between the two film stocks was striking.

-Wm.
 
I don't think that's what he was asking for, John-Peter. In both cases you pick the colors to be added. Tom wants to know how to determine the colors of something in a black and white photo (in other words, what color a specific car or article of clothing was). Again, I don't think there's any software that will tell you "the person on the left had brown hair, the car was green, and the man's suit was blue". The only way to determine it is to compare with known objects-signs, writing, known vehicles, etc., and that's a pretty imprecise method.

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, Tom?

-Wm.

PS-but I will add that that colorization program you linked to works really well!
 
Thanks Gents.

William, that's exactly what I want the software to do: compare unknown object color with known object color".

In other words, if I select a specific item in the b/w photo, then use the app's palette to choose the color I *know* that item is, then the software would analyze all the shades of black/grey/white in the photo and suggest what those colors actually were.

Unfortunately I don't know what type of b/w film was used. I've attached a compressed jpeg; forum won't accept the original 300K size.

Tom
 
I knew an old photographer who was quite adept at translating B/W photos to color. It was a knack. He was usually right-on with his artistic abilities. Unfortunately, he is long deceased. If you can find someone with that eye, he might could help. It is an art and a gift.
 
If I were to hazard a guess:

If it was shot on panchromatic, that plane is dark blue, maybe black, and white. I doubt it's green, unless it's particularly dark, and I doubt the light parts are yellow, unless it's really light. Greens and yellows tend to show as a middle gray color

If it was shot on orthochromatic, it's red and yellow or red and white. Red shows up almost black on ortho.

That photo's a tough one-there's not much that has a definite color-any propeller logos are too small to really matter, and there aren't any obvious things like stop signs and such. It's very contrasty-I think it's on ortho, but I'm no expert.

It reminds me, there's a guy whose name escapes me at the moment, who does some wonderful colorization work. <span style="font-style: italic">The Rodder's Journal</span> did a couple of stories on his work-he retouched a bunch of photos of famous custom cars, cars that were seldom if ever shot on color film. His work was fantastic, and not obviously colorized.

-Wm.
 
A little off topic, but since many here are history buffs, my great grandmother passed away just a year ago at 100 years old. She was one of the few remaining professional colorists. She painted hundreds, if not thousands of photos by hand before color film was invented and made her profession obsolete.
 
Tom, I'm not sure how the French painted their version, but here's how we painted ours.
There were a few different variations of this aircraft depending who was using it. PJ

SB2U.jpg
 
The most accurate way is to actually measure the density of the negative in the area that you are trying to determine the color. The device used for such work is called a Densitometer (but good luck finding one) and there are forumlas for figuring out the color by the density. Other than that, the best bet is to try and compare known shades to known colors but it can still be a crapshoot err, best guess.

The advantage that colorists had, like Steve's grandmother, is that they were still able to see the actual colors themselves and not have to compare them to objects subjected to UV exposure over time or other forms of degredation.
 
Send it over to Ted Turner.
 
I've gone through this when researching markings on images made around 1917.

You have to do a lot of assuming. If you know the film base used then you can, to a point, extrapolate the response curve of the film ("panchromatic" implies it's sensitive to all light, but that sensitivity isn't necessarily linear) - but then you also need to know if the photographer was using any filtration (or not). Filters were (and still are) used to change the contrast and response of the film to different colors. Panchromatic images of a red airplane with a reddish filter will result in light tones in the image, while green objects will be really dark. The same scenario with a greenish filter would result in a black airplane while green objects would be really light.

All those variables added to the overall luminosity of the different elements of the image would make nailing down the original color values pretty difficult and you're still left guessing.
 
Thanks gentlemen. I'll keep searching and poking around, but "deducing" original colors from a black and white photo (which has been scanned) is probably not going to be something I'll have much success with.

I've found several color photos of later versions of the plane; however, as the V-156 is displayed indoors, in a 1938 airshow in Paris, probably the only way to know the original appearance is to find someone who was there.

Tom
 
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