Colorising

I have previously reflected on what a shame it is that some of the classic old spanko movies/videos can't be brought up to contemporary production standards - thinking of the classic Debbie ones from NuWest for example.

The same is true for still images - now that computer memory and storage is cheap we can have large high quality colour images whereas in the past we had to make do with a lot of monochrome. Some were clearly never even made in colour - in other cases, it was too expensive to use all colour images in printed magazines. Typical issues of Roué and Janus only had around eight pages of colour out of maybe 64 pages in total, and that included the pretty uninteresting back cover.

However, the technology does now allow us to do something about that - with varying success. There are plenty of packages around to manipulate graphic files, and some that specifically exist solely to allow you to 'colorise' monochrome images. I tend to use Adobe Photoshop and have had some good results and some less good.

I'll start with a couple of examples from Janus. Neither are total disasters but the first example is pretty poor - it certainly doesn't do anything to make the image more attractive or interesting. The second is somewhat better - perhaps unusually so, given that one of the things the Colorize function seems to struggle with is pictures of multiple people with different skin tones - it typically seems to get one right and the other is poor. Clearly in the fourth image shown here, the first girl's bottom is a bit light in colour but that could probably be further adjusted if it really mattered to you.

Moving to an example from Roué...

I think this one has colorised quite effectively although I'm not sure whether I don't still prefer the original B&W - it's a useful reminder that sometimes people select B&W over colour as a matter of preference to create a particular effect.

The remainder, I think, are mostly from NuWest and Shadowlane.

I would say that both of the examples above are quite good - colorising has added something in both cases although, of course, they still look like old pictures.

However, in this case, colorising just hasn't worked at all. If anything it looks like a sepia version of the original. (Not sure of the source for this one - maybe something like Martinet magazine?) 

This one is a bit better although the girl's foot and the spanking hand are rather grey and her face is rather suntanned. It just show the difficulty of a range of skintones.

The two examples above I think have worked rather well although the background in the second example is a bit on the grey side still.

Lastly a personal favourite.

I was thinking for a while that I might use the colorised version as a Favourite of the Month to see if anyone spotted what I'd done. I think this is a really powerful image. You know the situation immediately. The very sombre expression on the faces of the three 'schoolgirls', all clutching their bottoms and the headmistress standing watching them leave her office with her cane still in her hand. I like the image in B&W, a lot. But I do think I prefer the colour version.

What does anyone else think?