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These colorized monochrome photos will change the way you imagine the past. Since we live and remember in color, a black-and-white image seems almost of another world. Through the process of colorization, that world becomes more familiar, easier to imagine, and easier to connect to.

Film colorization can be done by hand or digitally. Before the 1970’s, the most basic colorization required skillful painting of color directly onto film stock. The advent of computers allowed for digital colorization, a faster but still time-consuming process. In all cases, while there are some clues to the original color, artists often have to research or guess what color to use.

If colorization interests you, then embrace the challenge! The guides here and here will help get you started, and we look forward to seeing your results! We previously wrote about colorizationhere.

Source: reddit

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    Boxing match aboard the U.S.S. New York, July 3, 1899

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    Yvonne (13) and Alexander (12) Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn take drink and smoke on yacht near Majorca

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    An Ojibwe Native American spearfishing, Minnesota, 1908

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    Adolf Hitler with Mussolini’s son-in-law and Joachim von Ribbentrop, attend a Nazi Party rally, ca 1930s

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    Soldiers wearing gas masks while peeling onions at Tobruk, October 15, 1941

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    Captain Walter “Waddy” Young and his crew pose in front of their caricatures on their B-29 Superfortress, November 24, 1944

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    British tattoo artist George Burchett, the “King of Tattooists”, ca 1930

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    Post officers show off their brand-new “Autopeds” scooters, Washington, D.C., 1917

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    Performer Sarah Vaughan, ca 1946

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    Joe Lincoln of Accord, champion decoy maker of New England, 1926

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    Drewry’s Bluff, Virginia, sling cart used in removing captured artillery during the American Civil War, ca 1865

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    Slice of life! A mother helps her child off the trolley on a Broadway in New York City, July, 1913

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    Black man drinking at ‘Colored’ water cooler in streetcar terminal, Oklahoma City, Oklahom ca July, 1939

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    A young John F. Kennedy immediately after his graduation from Harvard, in the summer of 1940

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    Times Square, D-Day, 1944

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    Children watch as their neighborhood is bombed in Minsk, Belorussia. The bombing was part of Operation Barbarossa. June, 1941

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    Stalin and Churchill in Livadia Palace during the Yalta Conference, February, 1945

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    Louis and Lucille Armstrong at the Sphinx, January 28, 1961

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