Thursday, January 7, 2021

Colorization

Good news - I have a new computer, finally, and I have Photoshop again. Thanks a ton to PJ at his Albums I Wish Existed blog for making a bunch of album covers in the last couple of weeks while I couldn't. By the way, in case you haven't heard, his blog was taken down due to a copyright takedown notice. He's replicated his blog here:

https://albumsiwishexisted2.blogspot.com/

However, he's taken down all links and instead will share music through SoulseekQT. As an aside, my music files currently are not being shared through Soulseek. However, now that I have my new computer, I plan on bringing them back to Soulseek in the next few days. I'll let you know when that happens.

One plus to working with PJ on album covers these past couple weeks is that he turned me onto a program called Pixbim Color Surprise AI. Basically, it takes black and white images and colorizes them. What's cool is that it uses some analysis to determine what the image is about and then makes intelligent guesses as to what the colors probably are. For instance, if it identifies light colored hair, it'll turn that blonde and if it identifies dark colored hair it'll turn that brown.

Normally, I'm not in favor of colorization because it doesn't look good. But I'm so impressed with this program that I bought it and I plan on using it to colorize the several dozen black and white album covers I have posted here. 

Let me give you an example. Up above is the cover I made for a Neil Young album some months ago. It's from so early in his career (1965 to 1967) that there are no color photos of him, so I took a black and white one and tinted it brown.

Whereas here is the version I just colorized using the Pixbim program a few minutes ago. What do you think? Is it better? Should I colorize more?  Personally, I'm pretty happy with it, and the colorization is mostly automated, so it's easy to do.

By the way, here's the link to the album in question, in case you missed it:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/01/neil-young-folksinger-demos-1964-1967.html

Here's another example, of a Joni Mitchell album cover. The old version is at top and the new version is at the bottom. I think the change is pretty damn amazing.











Here's one more that I feel I have to highlight. For some of the others that I've just done, I did some touch up work, either in the program itself or in Photoshop. But for this below cover of songwriters Bacharach and David I did basically NO touch up work. This is all what the program did on its own. (Note that I'm referring to the main image and not the text, which is a separate thing.) The program decided the shirts should be blue, and the background brown, and all the rest. So I was able to make this change literally in a minute.


33 comments:

  1. I also just colorized this Joni Mitchell.

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/12/joni-mitchell-club-47-cambridge-ma-1-10.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Neil Young looks great. Keep up the colorization.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey Paul, Is the free version a 15 day trial that will no longer work unless you pay for it or is it Freeware?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's a limited time trial. I forget how long. One or two weeks, I think. And during that time, it has watermarks over the final version you make. But there's a preview mode, and you can take a screenshot of that without the watermarks, but you lose some of the resolution. Still looks pretty good, though.

      Delete
  4. They look great Paul! The clarity in the Joni Mitchell is amazing. Nice work. Burt

    ReplyDelete
  5. Here's another one I just did that I think came out nicely. James Taylor and Joni Mitchell.

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/07/joni-mitchell-james-taylor-in-concert.html

    ReplyDelete
  6. And here's another Joni one:

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/12/joni-mitchell-second-fret-philadelphia_15.html

    ReplyDelete
  7. Here's one of Bacharach and David:

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/10/various-artists-covered-burt-bacharach.html

    ReplyDelete
  8. And one of Berns and Ragavoy:

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/10/various-artists-covered-bert-berns.html

    ReplyDelete
  9. Here's three of Goffin and King:

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/02/various-artists-covered-gerry-goffin.html

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/02/various-artists-covered-gerry-goffin_26.html

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/02/various-artists-covered-gerry-goffin_27.html

    ReplyDelete
  10. Here's two of Leiber and Stoller:

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/10/various-artists-covered-jerry-leiber.html

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/10/various-artists-covered-jerry-leiber_5.html

    ReplyDelete
  11. One of Otis Blackwell:

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/10/various-artists-covered-otis-blackwell.html

    ReplyDelete
  12. Three of Pomus and Shuman too:

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/10/various-artists-covered-doc-pomus-mort.html

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/10/various-artists-covered-doc-pomus-mort_27.html

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/10/various-artists-covered-doc-pomus-mort_9.html

    ReplyDelete
  13. Here's one featuring Peter Green with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. It's not so great since the original is really rough.

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/02/john-mayall-bluesbreakers-with-peter.html

    ReplyDelete
  14. Here's an Aretha Franklin. Also not so great due to rough source material.

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/04/aretha-franklin-swing-in-wdr-studio-l.html

    ReplyDelete
  15. Love your blog but the non-colorized photos look better.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Have to completely agree with you: Usually, I hate artificial colorization, but these look fantastic!

    ReplyDelete
  17. Seems like a good program from your terrific results.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Some more. Jackie DeShannon:

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/09/jackie-deshannon-dont-doubt-yourself.html

    ReplyDelete
  19. Mann and Weil:

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/12/various-artists-covered-barry-mann-and.html

    ReplyDelete
  20. Barry and Greenwich:

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/01/various-artists-covered-jeff-barry-and.html

    ReplyDelete
  21. For this one, to get rid of a tinted black and white pic of George Harrison, I found a different nice color pic. So no colorizing here:

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/05/george-harrison-acoustic-versions-1969.html

    ReplyDelete
  22. Here's a Joni Mitchell one I had a lot of trouble with. For some reason, the colorizing didn't work, so I had to do a lot of it in a more painstaking way.

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/12/joni-mitchell-second-fret-philadelphia.html

    ReplyDelete
  23. Phew! This Rolling Stones one also needed lots of extra work to make it look okay.

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-rolling-stones-bbc-sessions-volume.html

    ReplyDelete
  24. This one also was a bitch to colorize, since it was too confusing for the program to figure out.

    https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-rolling-stones-bbc-sessions-volume_10.html

    ReplyDelete
  25. Paul, I just bought Pixbim Color Surprise AI after being up way too late last night, playing with the trial version. Usually does a fantastic job, although I almost always do a little tweaking in Photoshop after. Thanks for the tip. I've loved your album downloads since I discovered your site, but wasn't expecting to get Photoshop tips here as well. Thanks a lot for all of it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, I usually have to do touch ups in Photoshop. And for some pics, it got confused and didn't work at all. But it helped big time well over 90% of the time.

      Delete
    2. I've had a few where it didn't appear to do anything at all, and then realized I needed to bump the Color Intensity Thingy a little to the right. Took me a while to figure that out.

      Delete
  26. Looks good. Keep up the great work.And as always thanks for all your time & effort.

    ReplyDelete