Colorized Vintage Young Beauty IV

Another anonymous young beauty colorized from her vintage portrait circa 1900s.  If anyone knows her name, please let me know.

Colorized Vintage Portrait of Cleo de Merode (1875-1966)

Another colorized vintage dark beauty (dark as in darkly photographed), a deadringer for the young Isabella Rosellini, daughter of the late Ingrid Bergman,. This time, someone quite popular during her time - the French Ballet Dancer Cleo De Merode (1875 - 1966) taken in 1903 . She was more known for her legendary beauty than dancing skills and at 22 became the mistress of 61-year old Belgian King Leopold II after attending one of her ballet performances. The model of choice among painters, sculptors and photographers (considered the most photographed woman during her prime) she was the first elite ballerina to dance with the Follies Bergere creating a sensation and a more modern following.

I made extensive creative liberties as you can see in the comparative. I threw out historic accuracy to get the outcome I want. In the first place, I have no information on her eyes and hair color.as the online sources I visited didn't have them (No problem as I can alter this when I have the information.) As it is, black hair and blue eyes are rare among peoples, but they do exist mostly in northern Europe. (Elizabeth Taylor who was British by birth, had raven hair and violet eyes. and was an example of a rare DNA mix.).

Her jewelry was a bit pathetic so I composited one from an online gold chain file. I added a rear bun on her head just to echo the red on her blouse which was also composited from a red mink coat. Her eyelashes which were only hinted at in the original were further detailed.

Colorized_Students of a Catholic school w dog circa 1900s

For my Lenten retreat - I colorized a vintage class picture in a Catholic school taken around the turn of the 20th century, along with the nuns and a few teachers. (Plus a dog said to follow one of the students to school and wait outside patiently and then followed her or him again back home every day.)

51 people and a dog to colorize in 3 days, a Hail Mary for each one to complete the 5 decades, give another 2.

I like the unstructured and very casual arrangement of the people in the lineup, even as the nuns so placed created symmetry.. So relaxed, unlike the class pictures I had in high school where the arrangement was stiff.

Colorized Vintage Portrait of Cissy Fitzgerald c1910

I came across this decently preserved vintage of a smiling woman which is rare considering that most vintage portraits often have serious looks.(http://petapixel.com/2016/03/12/video-people-never-smiled-old-photos/)  This is a portrait of a certain Cissy Fitzgerald sporting a full smile. And it's not a contrived smile, showing an imperfect but healthy set of front dentures that was also rare at a time when fluoride toothpaste has yet to be marketed.


I couldn't make out the flowers on her hat which was hinted only by an outline as I colorized the leaves. So I just guessed and composited a couple of white carnations from another file.

Colorized Fitz Guerin's Lady Libertine 1902

At the other extreme, this vintage portrait invites some gay abandon in colorization thanks to a riotous background and a woman who looks like a Gypsy minus the usual trinkets and the dieting. The vintage photo is from a post-American Civil War veteran Fitz Guerin who took up photography after the war. It was titled "Lady Libertine" one of his so-called metaphorical maidens taken in 1902, just a year before he died. I have no idea what the metaphor was about, but the vintage photo is well-preserved as an excellent specimen for colorization.

This portrait shows a very healthy woman puffing cigarette at a time when the habit was considered unlady-like. (While cigarettes had been hand-rolled even before the civil war, the first commercial mass produced cigarettes appeared in 1881 and cigarette smoking was first advertised for women in 1920). And what is that on her right hand? Looks like an Amarula or a Bailey's Irish cream liquor coffee, one of my favorite beverages that I can no longer afford. With 18% alcohol content, liqueur is stronger than champaigne with just 12% alcohol. This lady certainly knew how to be drunk in style though cheaper. However, It has to be an earlier version, since neither the Amarula nor Bailey's existed prior to 1970.

Fitz Guerin's Lady Libertine is one of the few vintage photos where I have 3 colorized versions. Colorization may be the only luxury I have today when I don't have to decide and make a choice. I just do what I like in as many versions. Well, I lied. I did have to decide that 3 was enough. There are several more colors and I am sure other colorists will have other ideas. Here are the two other more aggressive (garish) variants.

Colorized Vintage Young Beauty III

Colorizing can often bring the subject to stand out using subtle colors in the clothes or background. The vintage photo itself suggest what colors to use.  Here is a colorized vintage portrait of an unnamed beauty circa 1900s where pastel hues in the dress is a natural choice.  I used off-white with a slight greenish hue (may not be apparent depending on how your monitor is calibrated).  Used a little creative liberty to put on an eyeshadow.  There have been colorized renditions of similar subjects using faded colors to retain the vintage look. It is not the same thing.  I don't subscribe to the philosophy of retaining the vintage look in colorizing. Like I said elsewhere in this blog, colorization is not about restoring.  It is not about the photo.  It is about re-creating a real-world scenario behind the photo.

Colorized Vintage Beauties I & II

A little erotic subject for a change. Came across this lovely specimen of the female persuasion that simply refused to be glossed over. Her sensuous youthful innocence represents precisely a lost irreplaceable period in time. I saw no specific name in the vintage file, nor in the site, simply referring to the photo as that of an unnamed beauty circa 1890s. Could be a stage actress. Doesn't really matter, she is timeless beauty personified. And now colorized.

Sometimes a vintage b&w registration gives a strong hint it has no place for subtleties. This one cried out for a little aggressive coloring. Some would call it garish colors. (garish as in red, lavender, fuchsia, and green, the kind you would expect Batman's arch nemesis Joker to wear.) But her aggressive beauty requires it. I went with dark hair with dark green eyes this time. Again, this is another unnamed beauty from late 19th or early 20th century.

Colorized Autry Family in a Winton Touring Car circa 1915

Here's a vintage Autry family portrait in a luxury Winton Touring car taken in 1910. The pioneering Cleveland-based Winton Motor Carriage thrived from 1897 to 1962. The beach is Old Orchard Beach in Maine,  The Everingham house is a  landmark at the time. at the corner of Seawall and Union Avenue   The house on the left remains standing as seen here

Yellow would seem like a good color choice, but I already made one and it would not stand out from the sandy beach color. So I experimented with white. just to be close to the vintage original where the car and the beach have about the same monochromatic registration. Just like black, white is another uninteresting non-color though the various shades that can create details can be a challenge on its own, such as the Library of Congress and the NY Grand Central buildings that I did earlier. I played around and settled with off-white that has slight greenish hue. This gives the car some character without being aggressive. Now whether the real Winton model used that color is another matter. On the side, this is another colorization where I spent more time on the background than on the main subject.

Front seat: chauffeur on left, James Lockhart Autry, III. on right. Back seat left to right: James Lockhart Autry, II, Allie Kinsloe Autry, and Allie May Autry.

Colorized 1929 Graham Paige Coupe with Two Ladies in a Park

This is among my first vintage car photos i colorized and which I can now form as part of a series. While I don't usually like colorizing inanimate objects, cars with occupants create a more interesting subject than standalone cars.

Colorized Portrait of a Boy by Wilhelm von Gloedon

This portrait was first thought to be a woman, but turns out to be a beautiful Sicilian boy dressed like one and captured by the famous gay photographer Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856 - 1931) at around the turn of the 20th century.  This was among my first colorization efforts, straightforward without engaging in creative liberties like changing the background which I could do later when revisiting my old works. As I am always on the lookout for vintage photos in the Public Domain, the works of von Gloeden with a large number of relatively high resolution prints have become a source. Never mind if his subject was mostly homoerotic.

Colorized 1920 Herbert E. French in a Packard touring car at the Library of Congress

Original Vintage Photo

This is a vintage photo of a certain Herbert E. French in a Packard Touring card  in front of the Library of Congress circa 1920.

Colorizing Options
Differentiating the various shades of white and grey for the backdrop was the main challenge. As usual, colorizing the car is open tovarious options, but decided on a red hue. This was one of the few colorization efforts with a second variation.  This time on a night time or dusk setting and using one of the Photoshop filters on rending lighting effects.

Colorized 1919 Haynes touring car with Family Passengers

Original Vintage Photo
Here's  a  vintage photo of the 1919 Hayes Touring at a California park (maybe the Golden Gate Park).

Colorizing Options

There would be no end to it if I could have my way.  I might be colorizing the same photo or portrait a thousand times and each one would offer a great visual experience. But I just have to make a conscious choice and sadly reject other equally wonderful coloring options. Black is often the least preferred options for colorizing a major photo element which in case is the car.  But for some reason, I chose black for the car body which allowed the little girl occupant in baby blue dress to stand out. Well, she would also stand out in pink.

Unfortunately, the outcome wasn't really as strikingly colorful as I wanted and a bit cold.  So rather than changing the color of the car, I made another version using autumn colors.  This was just one of the few instance when I made two colorized versions of the same photo. I have made a few others but the other options remained unfinalized. Take note, spring and autumn colors register about the same greys when desaturated for a black and white photo.

Creative Liberties: Colorized Lucille Ball 1946

Here's the gorgeous Lucille Ball that everyone knows from the I Love Lucy TV show of the 50s and early 60s. A near Rita Hayworth look-alike in her 30s (born 1911) she was a ravishing beauty but somehow didn't project the same screen presence or acting panache as Rita and became known as the Queen of B-movies. Her talent lay in comedy having starred with the Three Stooges and the Marx Bros at the start of her screen career. She ended up in Television as a comedian with Cuban husband Desi Arnez in the highly successful I Love Lucy sitcom. In this portrait, Lucy was already 35, quite old by Hollywood standards in 1946. Her TV career would soon start 2 years later.

Creative Liberties
This 1946 vintage photo was easy to colorize except that I invested a little more time to indulge in some little creative liberties. Sometimes an image element is not something I was to appear in the final outcome and simply Photoshop it out.  I don't know what that furniture behind Lucille was and just removed it as irrelevant to the outcome I wanted.

Creative Liberties: Coloized Wedding Portrait of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy

Creative Liberties

Vintage photos provide an opportunity to engage in creative liberties that enhance the outcome.  This is what matters to me - the outcome.  Faithfulness to the original photo is a illusory considering that the colorization process on its own creates an entirely new visual experience that renders the original vintage photo a mere outline and a shadow. The outcome is no longer the same as the original. That is why colorized vintage photos can be copyrighted.  They are legally considered derivative works entitled to their own intellectual property protection for the colorizer.

Here is a vintage portrait of the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis taken in 1953 on the day of her wedding to Senator John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts. I could have used baby blue, fuschia, yellow or mint green on her dress that can create a more pleasing visual result. However, from online sources, I learned her wedding dress was white. That was the only concession I made but the rest were all a products of creative liberties that on the whole renders the colorized image entirely different from the original.

Colorized New York Grand Central circa 1910

The edifice  is not exactly the best example of architectural creativity but it was an imposing landmark that is now just another major train station overshadowed by towering New York buildings  surrounding it.   Here is the Grand Central just a few years after its construction was completed in 1903 with continuing improvements.  I am not sure about the exact year this was taken, but the large presence of horse-driven carriages suggest it may not be later than 1910-1915.

Research in Colorization Part II, Colorized Winston Churchill as a Cornet in the 4th Queen's Hussar's Cavalry, 1895

I came across a relatively large file of a  vintage portrait of a 21-year old Winston Churchill after graduating from the Royal Military Academy and getting commissioned as a Cornet (2nd Lieutenant) in the 4th Queen's Own Hussars.  I thought it was a good material for colorization which I did with the help of online materials on the Hussar's uniform used at that time.  There were some earlier colorization work on this but it turned out their colors were less than authentic.

The uniform seemed a standard one for European cavalry and was/is used by royalty as well, with several color iterations.  Depending on the decade, the Hussar uniform can be dark red, blue, light blue, or black, based on what my PC screen showed.  I started with dark red and light blue pants but was confronted with the real Hussar's uniform owned by Churchill as currently exhibited in a British history museum. I had to change the color to dark blue with red collar and sleeve edge.

The full body standing version was subsequently colorized using information from the seated version. I had thought it would be easier this time but adapting the vest at a slightly different angle was just as tedious.  Some research was also done about the saber which was LOST against the black pants.  Even if you lighten the pants in Photoshop, only a dark outline of the saber showed.

Online Research in Colorization Part I

Online research helps to ensure colorizing a vintage photo has some historic authenticity.  I find this basic when working with photos of historical relevance or value.  What's the color of Abe Lincoln's Eyes.  What's the color of Winston Churchill's hair when he was young, etc.  Admittedly, not all such information can be obtained, and you are left with guesswork for many of your colorization effort.

The vintage photo of Sir Winston Churchill as a young teenager can be colorized with guesswork. Luckily, the information I needed was available online. For instance, historical narration depicted what little was left of his hair in the 1940s to be grey and you need to delve deeper to learn he was a redhead when young. What's the color of his eyes? Blue.  That makes him a rare biological specimen since redheads with blue eyes represent only 1% among redheads. Now how did I learn he had red hair?  Well, he was nicknamed "Copperknob" in school because of his red hair. And here:

"The Young Churchill"
The Honorable Celia Sandys
Calgary, Alberta, 23 September 1994:


"During the Second World War, convinced—no doubt with good reason—that if the Germans were to invade Britain their first targets would be my grandfather and his family, she hatched a plot of her own. Nanny intended, in the event of this almost unthinkable and certainly unmentionable outcome of the war, to remove my brother, my sister and myself from the clutches of a vengeful Adolf Hitler. The plan was to dye our tell-tale Churchillian red hair black, and to escape to the protection of her family, who had a pub in Liverpool."

Compositing

If you notice in the background, I've composited a monochromatic image of the older Sir Churchill as most people know him. Not necessary, but I guess it helps to remind me and others who this handsome boy was. The first time I saw this picture, I went through a severe disconnect between what I know of Churchill and this.

Needless to say, the colors of his wardrobe are all guesswork. But a little detailing helped on the hair, necktie, his shirt, and if you look close enough, a more detailed button hole on his coat lapel and a kerchief that only seemed hinted at in the original vintage. Is this all necessary? It is to me, especially when blowing up the original image of 800 pixels to the size I work with, typically above 2000 pixels at the longest side.

Restoration & Colorization

Photo Restoration 

Restoration is simply about the photo itself.  You try to bring it back to its original or pristine condition, whether colored or monochrome.  It means making the image discernible with better contrast and definition for its major image elements.  That requires building up some details that have been obscured by age and involves correcting for speckles, paper creases, dust, water or fire damage, torn or lost parts, and discoloration.

Restoration can be done by guesswork or research, or both  Missing parts can be restored if the information can be extrapolated from adjacent surviving parts.  Backgrounds such as walls, mountains and hillsides, as well as flowers or skies do not pose much problem.  You know them from experience.  Some research may be needed. Even obscured facial details can be restored if there are associated reference photos with the needed information.


Colorization

Colorization, on the other hand,  is more than just restoration.  Putting colors does restore the photo and in fact demolishes it and creates an entirely new visual. Colorization creates a possible reality behind the photo.  "Possible" because much of colors you use are based on guesswork to create a satisfying visual outcome.  

Colorization actually requires and starts with restoring a vintage photo.  You can colorize right away, but you risk colorizing the speckles, dust, and discolored parts that are not originally part of the photo. But in addition, you also need some or a lot of research, depending on the complexity of the photo to be colorized. Otherwise, you could interpret a blemish or discoloration as a print artifact.  I once colorized a face and removed the black aberration on a jaw only to realize it was a mole. I also colorized a severely faded color photo for a friend's mother, correcting what I thought was discoloration on her left forearm.  When I sent the results, the mother liked what I did but pointed out that her forearm suffered 2nd degree burns in an accident and was therefore lighter than the rest of her arms.  This shows you need to know your subject when restoring or colorizing,

Detailing Options

There are many detailing options a colorizer can do when working with faded and "dirtied" vintage photos,  I am not a photo restoration expert but would prefer to restore a possible reality behind the photo, rather then merely restoring the photo. My interest is arriving at a satisfying outcome (to me), not maintaining any historic accuracy where historicity is not important.

Depending on the subject, I sometimes add details that are not there or imagine it as hinted in the photo.  I tend to manipulate or edit the vintage photo.  It's fun to do and throws out the window any claim to historic authenticity when such qualities are not really important to the subject  Hence, this colorization work on the ladies of what was labeled the Age of Jazz Vagabonds dated in 1921 added details that probably did not even exist at that time.  I don't now the car, nor the ladies (but have seen them before in another colorized photo in another car and pose) and wantonly added details that made it look more interesting on close inspection. Not perfect though as I am still polishing the detailing aspect.  If you compare this with the original below, you can easily see what I have added.  I could add more, but just got too tired to go the distance.

Colorized Mitchell Touring Car at the Golden Gate Park (circa 1920)

 Apart from old portraits, my favorite subjects to colorize are vintage cars.  I used to have a collection of die-cast vintage cars from Matchbox and later of 1/18 models and enjoyed photographing them against dioramas I would build. Well, I think it's cheaper to just get hold of vintage photos of these cars that are already in the Public Domain and colorize them to create a possible reality behind the photos. There are so many color choices to make and I just have decided on this one for the Mitchell Touring car taken at the Golden Gate Park sometime in the early 20s.

Colorized Vintage Portrait of a Boy from Von Gloeden

The colorization of the face of this boy from a vintage portrait by Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856 - 1931) is enough to provide all the needed emphasis to bring this photo to life while providing enough artistic insight in highlighting what you want emphasized.

This is the simplest colorization, just focusing on the main subject without bothering with peripheral elements such as a backdrop or a clothing. It's called selective colorization. I've even seen it done to convey a strong, sensuous or hilarious message, such as a Marilyn Monroe vintage photo on the right where the only element that was colorized was her pouting lips and nothing else. LOL.

Colorized Abe Lincoln from a Photo by Mathew Brady

 Something basic for colorization work one can't do without - Abe Lincoln's vintage portrait. There are several online but only a few are large enough to bother colorizing.  Many have already been colorized by seasoned colorists and while the temptation to repeat their works with another shade, I opted for a less commonly colorized pose with only 1 or 2 another colorist doing a good job at it  This is one was taken by a certain Mathew Brady and while the specimen I got leaves much to be desired in terms of detail, it does lend itself to some creative liberties in putting in details that are not in the original vintage photo, as you can see below.

Colorized_American Native Indian Chief Flying Hawk, Čhetáŋ Kiŋyáŋ of the Oglala Lakota Triben (circa 1900s)

My colorized take on the subject.   As guesswork based on a little research online, there are several color options on the wardrobe but basic is the skin color. of the what is called the red race  The original vintage below has been well preserved and though scanned at medium resolution, provides a good enough detail for colorization.