How to make a black and white photo color online – 3 ways

Now I will tell you how to turn a black and white photo into color by coloring an old photo with new juicy colors. We need to convert the photo from black and white to color.

Although color photography dates back to the 19th century, a significant proportion of photographs taken in the second half of the 20th century were shot in black and white. This method was cheaper and more common at the time. Then there were no digital cameras and smartphones with built-in cameras.

Many of us have old black and white photographs taken at various points in our lives: parents’ weddings, photos of grandparents, childhood photos from different years, etc. Perhaps you would like to turn black and white photos stored in family albums, to color images to see old pictures in rich color.

How to make a black and white photo color? There are several ways to solve this problem using software.

You can use a graphics program installed on your computer, or an online service on the Internet. In the first case, in most programs, the user will have to perform many actions manually and spend quite a lot of time on it. The second option involves performing all operations on a remote online service without the direct participation of the user in a short period of time.

In this article, I will tell you how to make a black and white photo color online using several services. The user does not need to install a photo editing program on his computer. All work will be carried out automatically on a remote service on the Internet.

Before performing this operation, the user will need to digitize old black and white photographs, for example, using a scanner. The scanner will convert the physical image into a digital image. For this task, any modern MFP (Multifunctional) device, which includes a printer, scanner, copier, is suitable.

As a result, black and white images will appear on your computer, with which you can perform further work on automatic coloring.

The transfer from black and white to color on the online service in the general case takes place in the following successive steps:

1. A black and white image is uploaded to the online service.
2. The service performs automatic colorization of the photo to turn the image into a color photo.
3. The finished color image is downloaded to the computer.

Coloring from a black and white photo to color online at Colorize Photos

Now we will try to make black and white color online using the Colorize Photos online service located on the popular Algorithmia resource. The Colorize Photos service uses artificial intelligence using deep learning neural networks.

The free service was created by scientists from the University of California at Berkeley. Colorize Photos has an API for automatically using the service’s capabilities.

To convert a color image to black and white, follow these steps:

1. Log in to the Colorize Photos page on the Algorithmia website.
2. Paste in the field a link to the URL of an image from the Internet, or click on the “Upload” button to upload a photo from a computer.
3. To start automatic colorization of the image added via the link, click on the “Colorize it” button (Colorize it). When using a photo from a PC, the photo coloring process will start automatically.
4. As a result of processing, a window will open with two photo options for comparison: black and white and colorized.
5. Click on one of the buttons to download a color photo to your computer:

• Download Comparison – download image comparison.
• Download Colorized Image – download a color image.

As a result, we get a color photo from black and white online. A colorized photo taken on a web service will appear on your computer. This picture was taken in the 60s of the XX century.

How to turn a black and white photo into color on ColouriseSG

The Colorise online service was created at GovTech by programmers from Singapore. The goal of the project is to colorize classic black and white photos with lifelike colors using algorithms powered by artificial intelligence. A neural network with many parameters is used with the Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) deep learning technique.

Uploaded images are not stored on the servers of the Colourise.sg service.

Go through the following steps:

1. Open the main page of the Colourise.sg website .
2. Scroll the scroll wheel down, click the mouse cursor in the captcha, opposite the item “I’m not a robot”. In this way, the service is protected from automatic actions of robots.
3. Drag and drop a photo from a PC to the designated area with the mouse, or click on the “Select photo” button to add an image from a computer using Windows Explorer.
4. In a special form, two views of the image will open for comparison: before coloring and after processing.
5. Click on one of the buttons:

• Download result – download the result.
• Download comparison – download image comparison.
• Color new photo – colorize a new photo.

Look at the final photo. The photo was taken in the 70s of the XX century.

How to make a black and white photo color online for free on the Color service

The Color online service was developed by Art. Lebedev Studio. The service works on the basis of machine learning algorithms and is designed for automatic coloring of monochrome images.

Color supports uploading images no larger than 1 MB.

Do the following:

1. Go to the Color service web page .
2. Drag and drop a photo to the central area on the site from a PC or upload a picture using File Explorer.
3. The service will start the automatic process of processing a black and white image.
4. After the process is completed, two images will open: the original and the colorized one.
5. Click on one of the buttons for further action:

• Post to gallery.
• Publish to gallery and download.
• Just download.

6. One image will be downloaded to your computer, consisting of two photos.
7. Open the image in any image viewer , take a screenshot from the colorized version of the photo to save this picture to your PC.

As a result, we got a color photo from a black and white online.

Article Conclusions

Many users keep old black-and-white photographs in albums, which are reminiscent of old times and people. There are ways to modernize old photographs by coloring the images. In some situations, there is no need to use programs installed on a computer, because, for example, you can make a color online from a black and white photo on a service on the Internet.