Colour From Mono

[Mike Farley]

A while back, I posted a shot of a colourful image taken with a camera that only shoots monochrome as it was what I had with me at the time.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3834&p=16628#p16628

By chance, I have come across an article about creating colour images from monochrome shots, taken with a Leica M10 Monochrom in this instance. Unsurprisingly, the author has been struggling to get a worthwhile shot from their expensive camera. They really are niche tools and most people are better off shooting in colour and converting to monochrome as required. The trick to putting colour back is to use the Colorize option in Photoshop ( Filters > Neural Filters > Colorize). The filter does not come in the standard PS installation and has to be downloaded when used for the first time. It also seems to be off by default and has to be turned on to process the image.

What would it make of my original monochrome shot?

Colour conversion

MC1a.jpg (99.91 KiB) Viewed 1281 times

Hmm, while it has done something, the colours are unrealistic and uneven on the knitted dog. The author of the article notes that purple patches are an issue with the filter, which is certainly the case in this instance.

I tried again with the same subject taken from a different angle.

Colour conversion 2

MC1b.jpg (86.89 KiB) Viewed 1281 times

That is a bit better. At least the subject has a more consistent colourisation even if it is not accurate. A couple of the cars and the sky are affected by the purple issue.

Perrhaps it would be better with a different subject?

House mono to colour

MC2.jpg (118.63 KiB) Viewed 1281 times

Actually, I quite like that result. The colours are reasonably accurate albeit a bit muted but the overall effect is quite pleasing. While the filter will not work with every shot, it does provide another option for post capture processing. It is not necessary to have an expensive mono camera as the filter functions with black and white shots converted from colour. It will be interesting to see whether Adobe improves it over time.

This is the original article that I read and triggered this post:

https://www.35mmc.com/30/12/2021/color- ... hn-ricard/

[Mike Farley]

After trying images that are solely digital, I wondered about how adding colour to those taken on black and white film would look. Once again, results were mixed. I did not see the issue with purple colourisation occur to the same extent but that might be due to the selection of subjects. Overall, colour was reasonably accurate for most of the photos I tried, albeit sometimes with a vintage look. For all the examples shown here, the original shot was taken on HP Delta 400.

This shot of some cows worked well. Initially colours were a bit muted and I boosted them by adding Vibrance and a bit of Saturation. For demonstration purposes, this is the whole frame.

Coloured cows

Cows - Colour.jpg (152.11 KiB) Viewed 1273 times

This is the original scan from the black and white negative.

Cows - original scan

Cows - Mono.jpg (193.11 KiB) Viewed 1273 times

Less successful was this image from the gardens at Hidcote. Some purple mottling is evident at the top.

Hidcote colour

Hidcote - Colour.jpg (212.21 KiB) Viewed 1273 times