Five Things — February 2021
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Dear friends,
I hope this letter finds you well and safe.
If you enjoy reading this newsletter, please share it with one friend who might also like it. Just forward this email or share the link www.alexnewsletter.com
In this month’s newsletter, I have decided to something different and focus it around a specific theme: “coloring the past”. Check the #1 thing to understand why and let me know if you like the change of pace.
Thank you for your time,
Alex
#1 Book The Paper Time Machine — Colouring the Past
Hard Cover book The Paper Time Machine (Amazon, 28€)
This book The Paper Time Machine is the reason I have decided to make this newsletter around the theme “coloring the past”. It has over 100 historical black and white photographs reconstructed in color — the photo on the cover is from one of the Wright brothers testing a gliding device.
This book changed the way I think about the past — it made it more real and closer than ever, and wonder if these people’s dreams and desires were any different than ours.
I recommend it as a great coffee table book and as motivation to seize every day.
#2 Coloring the Past (Human Version)
How obsessive artists colorize old photos (YouTube, 7 min)
This is an excellent video about the art and science of coloring black and white photos. It requires meticulous research, including the color of signs, vehicles, and world fashion spanning decades, before even opening Photoshop.
The main interviewee in the video is Jordan Lloyd, one of the authors of The Paper Time Machine, and most examples shown are in the book.
#3 Coloring the Past (AI Version)
1913 Tokyo in 4k, 60 fps (YouTube, 5 min)
The new era of coloring the past has arrived. Bringing color to photos is not enough. The polish startup Neural Love is using artificial intelligence to color old videos and also restore damaged frames, upscale image resolution, and boost fps. Their YouTube channel has several videos but my favorite is probably this one from Tokyo in 1913 in 4k and 60 frames per second.
Bonus videos:
1911 New York in 4k, 60 fps (YouTube, 8 min)
1890 Paris in 4k, 60 fps (YouTube, 6 min)
1972 Apollo 16 Lunar Rover in the Moon (YouTube, 3 min)
#4 You can now colorize old photos online for free
MyHeritage in Color (website, App also available)
This is a picture of my grandparents’ wedding in 1951. On the left is the original version and on the right a colorized version using artificial intelligence.
MyHeritage, an online genealogy platform, has licensed this technology and has made it available free to use. The technology uses machine learning algorithms that have been trained using millions of real photos and have developed an understanding of our world and its colors.
If you have some old black and white photos, test them and you will be amazed by the results.
#5 Best World War I documentary: They Shall Not Grow Oldd
Trailer (YouTube, 2 min)
Making of (YouTube, 5 min)
So, we have all this technology and what can we do with it?
Well, Peter Jackson used similar technologies to direct and produce the film They Shall Not Grow Old, one of the best World Wart I documentaries. It is not the history of the War but it tells several stories using archival footage, restored, colorized, and with sound! Take a look at the Making of to better understand the work behind it.
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