Eli5: How do photo restoration artists know the supposed colors of greyscale images?

1.70K views

Are the colors based purely on their assumptions/imagination, or do the greyscale images retain some sort of data that tells what color on what part?

In: 641

25 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

They don’t know, they guess based on similar illustrations, and if none are available, make up colors that look ‘good’ or seem to be correct. [These guesses in colorization are not infrequently incorrect, and there is controversy about the alteration of historical photos that colorization produces.](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/history-colourisation-controversy)

You are viewing 1 out of 25 answers, click here to view all answers.