colourising b/w photos with AI

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ge_rik
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colourising b/w photos with AI

Post by ge_rik » Tue Jul 21, 2026 12:50 pm

I've been playing around with getting ChatGPT to colourise some Southwold Railway photos.

Eg
swatwenhaston-1.jpg
swatwenhaston-1.jpg (455.75 KiB) Viewed 45 times
file_00000000ab2481f4a33d85101da737a5.png
file_00000000ab2481f4a33d85101da737a5.png (2.7 MiB) Viewed 45 times

Rik
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Re: colourising b/w photos with AI

Post by ge_rik » Tue Jul 21, 2026 12:52 pm

I had to tell it that the loco should be GER blue
file_0000000033f481f4a54193b5ba8d4eb6.png
file_0000000033f481f4a54193b5ba8d4eb6.png (2.72 MiB) Viewed 43 times

And then tell it to remove the GER lettering
file_000000006b1881f4a51cdb3c13cff450.png
file_000000006b1881f4a51cdb3c13cff450.png (2.66 MiB) Viewed 43 times

Interesting it's also removed the caption from the original postcard


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Re: colourising b/w photos with AI

Post by ge_rik » Tue Jul 21, 2026 1:29 pm

file_000000005f4082469e63f7a9c3dd233e.png
file_000000005f4082469e63f7a9c3dd233e.png (2.7 MiB) Viewed 36 times
I wanted to change the colour of the loco in the shed but I've now exceeded my daily limit for the freebie processing

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philipy
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Re: colourising b/w photos with AI

Post by philipy » Tue Jul 21, 2026 4:15 pm

Looks good Rik. I did some playing with colourising back when I built the Chingford contractors loco, it wasn't bad but I think things have moved on since then. I actually used the colourising feature of "Find My Past" for that, which was the only easily available one at the time.

I notice on your first set of pictures that it has actually coloured the "green" spectacle in blue, which is of course correct but it could easily have missed that one!
Philip

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