Historical colorization is narrative ethics before prettiness
`historical-photo-color` serves genealogy books, local gazetteers, and museum panels: brass buttons, brick courses, and street signage can anchor a decade, yet most family prints lack corroboration—palette notes should read as informed guesswork versus that-day truth. Writing inferred hues into chronology misleads descendants; layer captions or metadata: scan tier, colorization tier, references, and uncertainty. Yellowed chemistry mistaken for object color turns whole blocks honey-brown without neutralization first. War, disaster, and minoritized subjects gain emotional punch in color—check institutional policy and family consent before release. Large clan projects need one skin-line strategy so great-grandparents and grandchildren do not look like unrelated color grades. Digital gazetteers that embed only lossy colorized JPEGs will show block edges and banding on reprint—keep lossless masters internally plus web derivatives.
Historical colorization workflow
- On `historical-photo-color`, collect place, year, wardrobe clues, and collection swatches first.
- Restore fade and tone, export intermediates, then colorize.
- Caption inference scope and citations; do not state palette as prose fact.