b/w film to colour film

[Premjit V.P.]

Mughal-e-Azam --> a very old Hindi film in b/w is re-released by digitally enchancing it in color. I saw the trailer of the movie and the colour reproduction was great! I have not come across any s/w which can digitally colourize the b/w image and restore the original colour.

If you have any comments on the techniques or softwares used, please do let us all know.

[monzie]

I might be wrong but I thought each 'cell' or frame was colorized individually as the only info you have is varying grades of GREY.

Digitally enhacing the original probably means each cell/frame was modified with photoshop (or such like) using masks etc. The work involved must be incredible and would probably be far cheaper to just reshoot the movie in color (unless you have a very low paid but skilled workforce....................like India?)

[Marty2003]

I saw a news report on this over how the three stooges DVD was colorized. I don't think there is any software which allows non-pro's to do this, but they explained how it was done. They have a program in which somebody manually colors in each I frame, the program then can automatically fill in the frames which were derived from the I frame, so it's not necessary to color in EACH frame manually. That would take ages

[jameshgross]

It is quite easy to find information on the process.
GOOGLE search "colorization process"