Auto color is plausible imagination, not an archival verdict
Turning gray or faded mono into color, models often inherit modern digital biases: cyan skies, hyper-green grass, peachy skin—pleasant but not guaranteed to match dyes, papers, and lab chemistry of the era. `colorize-bw-photos` fits first-pass genealogy, exhibit mockups, and side-by-side social posts; textbooks, news, or legal exhibits need captions stating inference or artistic restoration plus a preserved monochrome master. Low-res scans let scratches, mold, and silver grain read as blush, lipstick, or neon; clean and optionally upscale before color. Roll mates should share white-point strategy or batches look like different film stocks. Colorization raises identifiability of faces and uniforms, so portrait rights, collection licenses, and resharing risk climb. Proof on sRGB and paper—screen-happy skin often dulls or shifts a step in print. On open repositories, separate scans from colorized derivatives in captions and rights metadata so crawlers do not propagate colorized files as the canonical public-domain original.
Auto colorization workflow
- Upload the cleanest scan or lossless export you have on `colorize-bw-photos` and keep the B&W master.
- Spot-check skin, sky, and uniforms for frame-to-frame jumps or dirt read as makeup.
- Publish with an inference label; for editorial use, archive the grayscale original alongside.