Photoshop Colourisations

The last year I’ve been working on restoring and colouring old photographs. Mainly as I wanted to restore some old photos for my grandma. Particularly ones of her mum, dad and her uncle who died in WW1.

It’s quite addictive and is a good use of time on a rainy day when I can’t get out in the garden.

Does anybody else do this?

 

I haven’t used Photoshop in years, but I do use Snapseed on my IPad and phone sometimes.

 

Oh never heard of snapseed. There seems to be quite a few progs/apps that do it now.

 

@JWK wow, that is great work! You’ve done the older boys face brilliantly! Photoshop is a fantastic tool.

What a precious photo though-to have carried that through the war. Apart from the creases it looked as if it was in relatively good condition for going through the war.

I guess he was a lucky survivor?

 

That is so cool!

Years ago I employed a kid a few doors over to help me once a week with light chores such as dusting or helping decorate cookies..etc. Well I ran out of stuff to do one day and got her started on scanning my family photos, many black and whites from a 100 or so years ago up to the 70s.. I have hundreds of them and how exciting this would be to enhance them!

Great thread!

 

@JWK Ah he was so lucky to survive but what horrors they must have seen must have really affected them.

The picture I posted is of my gt grandmas nephew Len. He died in a POW camp in Germany a month before the end of the war in 1918. His brother Sid was killed earlier that year. My gt grandmas brother Sammy died at passchendale in 1917. They were all from Great Yarmouth and part of the Norfolk Regiment. Do you know what regiments your relatives were in?

I just wish this generation would learn from past wars. All this hatred and extremism leads to such atrocities.

Yes, I went to the cinema to see the film the night it was shown live across the uk. I’m not ashamed to admit that I was in tears. The film itself was fantastic. It’s amazing how adding colour makes it all so realistic and brings them to life compared to black and white. That’s why I got into colourisation-I wanted to bring my relatives back to life. Their stories mean so much to me-I’m so grateful to them for everything they struggled with and gave for us.

Do you use a graphics pad at all when you are restoring photos or do you use a mouse? Last year i purchased a Wacom graphics pad and it is fantastic. Makes it so much easier.

 

Yes. My father was in the RCAF for II and he rarely spoke about it. And he was thousands of feet above. I cannot imagine being at ground zero in any war.

 

These are some of my earlier colourisations. 3 generations of my mums side....my Grandad, his dad and his dad.

My grandad: he joined the navy at just 16. Lied about his age! Survived several bombing where his ship was sunk in ww2. He was yeoman of signals and had passed his chief petty officer exams.



My gt grandad: he was in ww1 aged 15!! In the tank corps and then cyclists. He was gassed and suffered nerve damage. Ended up
in a wheel chair and died at 39.



My gt gt grandad: skipper in the merchant navy in ww1 - his fishing vessel was used as a minesweeper.




Love them all to bits

 

@CanadianLori if you have any photos you’d like enhancing or repairing etc just email me them. I do it just as a hobby. I love bringing people back to life

 

Thank you @Snorky85 that is soooo nice an offer!

Wouldn't it be fun to be able to change pictures into character interpretations. You know what I mean..... putting a little come hither in Grandmother's eye..

 

@JWK well my other hobby is now genealogy. My grandma (my only surviving grandparent) had always wanted it doing and so about 2 years ago I started doing it and for her 85th birthday I gave her a family tree/research album that I did for her. She had no idea I was doing it so it was fantastic to give it to her. She spent the day in tears reading it - not that I wanted her to cry on her birthday but she was so happy and it brought back so many memories for her.

I find it completely addictive! I was lucky that when I was younger I recalled my grandma showing me her only small photo album of family members so it gave me a good start on her side. I found out who her grandad from birth certificates and wedding certificates I had which was the catalyst for the research. I ended up finding a cousin from great yarmouth via ancestry and we have met up several times - such a lovely relative and so pleased to find them.

We share the same great grandad who turned out to be a town councillor and one of the biggest fishing smack fleet owners on the east coast and owned grocers shops and ships chandlers. What a fascinating man he was - so fascinating that a member of the GY history society asked if he could do an article on him for their annual publication. So I got heavily involved in that. It also turned out that he had a load of glass slides and it turned out the slides were of my great grandads fishing smacks/tugs!!





In terms of the WW1 information, I was lucky enough to turn over a photograph and it was a post card from my gt gt uncle Sammy. I was able to find his service records (very lucky that his survived the ww2 fire/water damage). Sammy is very special to me - mainly because he was 27 when he was killed and not far off my own age when I was researching him. Made me so sad when I found out how he was killed. I honestly think I went through a mourning process for him the last year or so. My grandma told me some stories of him that her mum had told her. She really loved her older brother Sammy. Apparently, according to my grandma, on her mums death bed she said that Sammy had come to see her - very shortly before she passed away. I've also had some odd connections with him - we went to Ypres on the 100th anniversary of his death (11th August 2017). We don't know exactly where he was buried but we know where he was killed and possibly buried. Most of his comrades that day were buried at Tyne Cot....on the way to the cemetery I said, I bet if Sam is buried here he will be on the outside edge right at the back. I have no idea why I thought that. Anyway - we got in the cemetery and thought we'd lay a wreath on his comrades grave. We looked up the reference and found it....right at the back on the last row. Next to it...the grave of an unknown Norfolk regiment soldier. Could be a huge coincidence but I like to think it's a connection with Sam and that he could be there. The following year we took grandma (now 86) and she got to pay her respects to him. Anyway, I've got a couple of lovely photos of him but I am only going to colour them when I think I can do them well enough - I don't want to make them look rubbish and be disrespectful to him (if that makes sense).