Color the World - Comparing Various Colorizing Web Sites

My puppy, Tyrion, stealing my chair

It has been a bit over a month since my last blog post. Back in October I was in London speaking at RootsTech and doing some sight seeing with my wife. We had a great time visiting her ancestral homeland and even got to see where one of her ancestors was buried at the Tower of London and another in Westminster Abbey. Since then I have been pretty busy. Our new puppy is very demanding and every time I sit down at the computer he begins to cry, so I haven't had much opportunity to write lately. My wife named him Tyrion after her favorite character in Game of Thrones.

But, I finally have a chance to write a short blog post so I decided to provide some input on the current interest on colorizing old photographs. I wanted to compare three of the leading colorization websites - Algorithmia, Colourise, and DeepAI. I had written a blog post about Algorithmia back on July 26, 2016, but decided to do this updated comparison now that there are competing sites out there.

All three of these sites are one step colorizing pages. All you have to do is upload the photo and hit the button to colorize the photo. I will show you the images from each site so you can compare them yourselves.








The first set of images is a photograph of a little girl's First Communion. The original was a sepia toned photo and I have no idea as to the color of the actual items.
















This photo was colorized at Algorithmia. The photo seems to be a bit overly pink in the skin tones in the face but almost grey for the hands. The piece of furniture that she is leaning on has a deep wood tone while the floor is an odd brown color with blue tinges. The background appears to be a vibrant blue sky with clouds and trees. The vine drapped over her has a blueish tint.

This photo was colorized at Colourise. The photo seems to be overly green and the skin tones are a bit muted. The piece of furniture in this photo seems to be made of metal with heavy steel colors or could be a darkly stained wood. The floor is grey and could easily be interpreted as concrete. The background here looks almost abstract with little discernible image compared to the other two images. The vine draped over her has a green tint and looks like leaves.













This photo was colorized at DeepAI. The piece of furniture appears to be wood at the top and then transitions into a darker color toward the bottom. The background in this photo has good colors but the blues are a bit muted compared to the one from Algorithma. The skin color is good but appears to fade off along the edges. The vine draped over her appears to have some red flowers with the green leaves.

This is the original photo of the Stueve family from Ohio. Hopefully we will see various colors in each set of clothes and have nice green grass when it is colorized.








This photo was colorized at Algorithmia. The grass looks fine but the other parts of the photo are not correct. Most of the skin tones are grey. The clothes tend to remain black or grey with red tones randomly placed.







This photo was colorized at Colourise. It is much more vibrant than the one done at Algorithmia. The skin tones look more natural but there are some random red spots around the chins of the men on either end.

This photo was colorized at DeepAI. The colors here are similar to those provided at Colourise but the random red spots are gone. 

This is the original photo of Jim Botkins. It is a nice sepia head shot.

This photo was colorized at Algorithmia. It has a blue tone to the image background which is also present in the image from DeepAI but not from Colourise.

This photo was colorized at Colourise. This photo seems to have a lot of darker tones around the face and the hair isn't as blonde as I would expect.

This photo was colorized at DeepAI. This image has a more consistent blue tone to the background and the hair and eye color look more natural compared to the other photos.










As you can see, the results of colorization depends greatly on which application you use. Also, Algorithmia adds a mark on each photo with their website. The other sites do not add a visible mark on your photos. Overall, I liked the results from DeepAI the most, followed by Colourise, and then Algorithmia last.