Colorization Solution

[Andrew B.]

I saw these links in the Photoshop U2U forum. This is a new colorization plugin for Photoshop called Coloriage: http://akvis.com/en/coloriage/index.php. And here is the method on which is seems to be based: http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~yweiss/Colorization/

I haven't had a chance to test this, and I don't know when I will. But, what I looked for on the product site is an indication or hint that the product comes with gradients or knows how to work with gradients. In other words, does it have the ability map in a color that changes in response to the luminosity level. And it looks like it might. So if this tempts anyone to test it, have at it and let us know how it works.

Right now it is Windows only. But Akvis sells some Mac products, so maybe the Mac version is on the way.

[Cristen Gillespie]

This looks really cool. I love hand-tinting, but this looks like it's the hand-tinting without the tedium. You choose your colors, you "draw" on the image, but you don't have to fill it all in.

I've saved a page from it to remind me to try this out when I have a bit more time. Thanks.

[Andrew B.]

I downloaded it and gave a few tries. Here are some initial thoughts.

1. Not as easy as I thought it would be, but much easier than doing it all by hand

2. Contrary to my first impression, the program does not map gradients into the image. The gradients it comes with are simply sources from which to pick one color at a time.

3. You can mark a face with more than one flesh color for greater realism, or for that matter, use this method any place on the image. While working in close it seems like this is a bad transition. But with routine viewing of the image, it will probably look fairly natural. This is also where some nice color sets would come in handy.

4. It does not call the Photoshop color picker. I calls a very limited Windows color picker. OTOH, one could place a small set of color swatches right onto the image, and then use the eyedropper inside Coloraige to pick them. Probably easier, except for having to retouch this away later.

Of course, if you own MATLAB, you don't need Coloraige. You can download the MATLAB code at the second link I posted.

[Cristen Gillespie]

> It does not call the Photoshop color picker. I calls a very limited Windows color picker. OTOH, one could place a small set of color swatches right onto the image, and then use the eyedropper inside Coloraige to pick them

Maybe I'm remembering reading the wrong thing--happens all the time, and it's amazing I manage to get anything right in the program I'm actually in--but didn't the instructions say you hold down a key, click in the document and slide over to another document to pick your colors outside of Coloraige? I suppose retouching swatches with your idea would work easily enough if you have some clear areas to place them in.

> Of course, if you own MATLAB, you don't need Coloraige. You can download the MATLAB code at the second link I posted.

I'm trying to get the white paper and the code as we speak. Hopefully, it will tell me what to DO with the code. If it's a case of "if you have to ask" I'm lost<G>

[Cristen Gillespie]

Okay, I see that Matlab requires....Matlab, which I have no intention of purchasing. I decided if I was going to try Coloraige, I'd give Black Magic another whirl, mainly because I couldn't remember what I thought of it the last time. Boooorrrrrring. Might be great for some people, and I suppose especially for people who have to churn the stuff out commercially. But I find it boring.

So I next installed Coloraige. The clock is undoubtedly running, but the program won't launch. I've attempted to install it twice, and it still doesn't launch. Dunno why.

Maybe my OS really is too farkled, but it thinks the app is installed, and so does PS. It simply doesn't DO anything when I click on it in the filter menu.

[Andrew B.]

So you see it on the PS Filter menu? Right? But when you try to run it, do you get any reaction (splash screen, error message, hour glass cursor, computer slowdown, filter menu stays open, etc).

[Cristen Gillespie]

So you see it on the PS Filter menu? Right? But when you try to run it, do you get any reaction (splash screen, error message, hour glass cursor, computer slowdown, filter menu stays open, etc).

A momentary flash like something is about to happen? But nothing does.

[Andrew B.]

Hmmm. You are supposed to get a screen that asks if you want to register/buy, contact, or continue. Then you are taken to the plugin. This startup screen is stored in the folder where I installed the entire package, as opposed to the single plugin file that goes with all the other plugins. This plugin file finds that the rest of the files by looking in the registry. So there are things you could look for, but maybe an email to the vendor would be the way to go now.

[LoisWakeman]

Cristen, I assume from the earlier posts that this is on Windows, OK? I wonder if what you are seeing is PS waiting for you to acknowledge the initial prompt, but the window is in the background so you don't notice it?

I've been caught by this sort of thing before: you can try obvious things like checking in the taskbar for a suspicious button (or via Alt-Tab), or Task Manager to see if there is anything extra running.

[Cristen Gillespie]

Hmmm. You are supposed to get a screen that asks if you want to register/buy, contact, or continue. Then you are taken to the plugin. This startup screen is stored in the folder where I installed the entire package, as opposed to the single plugin file that goes with all the other plugins. This plugin file finds that the rest of the files by looking in the registry. So there are things you could look for, but maybe an email to the vendor would be the way to go now.

Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, it does launch to that screen. It's when I click on continue that it does nothing. I'll talk to the vendor. There must be something simple that isn't bringing up the filter.

[Cristen Gillespie]

Cristen, I assume from the earlier posts that this is on Windows, OK? I wonder if what you are seeing is PS waiting for you to acknowledge the initial prompt, but the window is in the background so you don't notice it?

I've been caught by this sort of thing before: you can try obvious things like checking in the taskbar for a suspicious button (or via Alt-Tab), or Task Manager to see if there is anything extra running.

I have been caught out this way too, and even on the Mac, so it's nothing new to either OS<G> The filter is supposed to run within PS, so I don't think it can be behind the document window. However, I haven't looked at the taskbar.

I'm going to chat with the akvis about this. Something is missing from the install, or my machine is going south--although it has installed stuff within the past week without trouble.

Hmmm....I wonder if I can find the version MS is using for the installer. It seems to me that just a few days ago, it updated my installer. Another possibility to check out.

[Cristen Gillespie]

Replying to myself with an update on Coloriage. Akvis responded to my plight quickly. I don't yet know exactly what the problem was, but between us, we found a solution. They sent me a link to a plugin file (8bf). I tried uninstalling the software again, and this time didn't check any boxes to have the installer install to any image editor. I manually placed the 8bf file into my plugins folder and Coloriage could be launched.

I've since played with it a fair bit. This is a very easy method for hand-tinting without painting very carefully. You quickly discover that areas close in tone should be zoomed in on and outlined to keep them separate. It isn't time-consuming once you get a feel for what the program will do depending upon your outlining. Where tones are very separate in the RGB greyscale (or color RGB which also has luminosity, although I only tested one such image), you don't have to be that careful.

The fact that similar tones will bleed together can be used to your advantage when you don't want a large flat area of color. Water, for instance, is rarely exactly the same color over a large area, and bleeding two colors together will add a feeling of depth. You can't simply use the same gradient and a lighter/darker tone. The gradient appears to be used according to the tones in the selected area, and if the values don't vary much, neither will your final color. Picking close colors from 2 gradients does work.

Equally, you could use one color for the hair in a portrait, and add depth by mixing in another close color with a few small streaks.

Changing brush size is automatic. Zoom in and your brush is smaller. Zoom out and it's bigger. Changing tools appears to be undocumented. I for Eyedropper, B for Brush, and E for eraser work. The other tools I cannot find a shortcut for, but they certainly are useful and should have keyboard shortcuts. The spacebar does give you a grabber hand, but on my machine, it only eliminates the view of the colored strokes. It doesn't pan. But the few other tools there are come in very handy, and I found myself using them quite a bit to speed up changes.

I couldn't launch Help on my machine. The other icons on the right side worked. I saved strokes, and that works. If you change your mind about a color a week or month from now, saving Strokes before you run the filter will let you open the image again and not have to start over. There appears to be no way to save a swatches set, which would be useful. There is a section of the color picker that I can find no use for. Perhaps those will encompass a swatch set in the future?

Results tend to be somewhat on the saturated side. You can, of course, use the System color picker and pick a less saturated color, or any color you like. You can expect that any color you pick will likely be more saturated than you thought, but since you work by running a preview before you run the filter itself, you have as much time as you want to alter it. I found it easier to paint quickly and cleanly, then use PS to lower the opacity to lower the saturation, or use a Hue/Sat layer to adjust both the selected color and saturation.

It's probably the quickest start on colorizing I've come across. Fine-tuning in Coloriage is probably less productive than in PS itself, but getting the basic colors down is very easy, especially when you have details that would take a long time to carefully paint. If their tones are separate enough from their environment, they only take a moment to dab a bit of color on them. Very nice.

The program is pretty quick, too. I ran it on some large images and while I got to watch the status bar, I really didn't have enough time to become thoroughly bored, or to decide the time it took to run once meant I wouldn't bother fine-tuning or changing my mind about a color. I think I'll be placing this filter fairly high on my purchase list.

[Andrew B.]

Yes, it looks pretty good. After being pretty disappointed with a different filter from them, I was pleasantly surprised by all the thought they put into how the interface works.

[Cristen Gillespie]

Yes, it looks pretty good. After being pretty disappointed with a different filter from them, I was pleasantly surprised by all the thought they put into how the interface works.

Enhancer? I didn't think it saved me any time, did anything I couldn't manage myself better, and it was way too saturated.

With Coloriage, the colors are still too saturated for hand-tinting, but not, I think, for changing color in a saturated image. At least it's fairly easy to reduce saturation, even selectively using Color Range to produce a mask. I think studies have shown more people like very saturated images, which is why consumer film became so saturated it was difficult to use for the rest of us, and then printing processes added saturation to even that.

I was surprised that something I thought would be difficult to do, therefore require a difficult interface, or if it had a simple interface, it wouldn't work well on a variety of subjects, worked so nicely. I do have filters that would require a month straight of study to really grasp and use well<G>

A couple of images to observe was all it took to understand how to approach colorizing with it. Those first were flops, but the included guide, short as it is, gave me all I needed to straighten out the problems.

[DeltaM]

Right now it is Windows only. But Akvis sells some Mac products, so maybe the Mac version is on the way.


Mac version has been released previous month. And software is more easy to use now: http://akvis.com/en/company/news.php

[Andrew B.]

Thanks for the heads up.

[plugsnpixels]

Just found this thread.

Cristen, I tried using the original version of Coloriage under Virtual PC with Windows, and failed. Eventually, when the Mac version was released, the problem I found with this and every AKVIS installer is as follows:

The actual plug-in and related parts ("thunk" files!) are installed under Hard drive>Library>Application Support>AKVIS LLC, instead of the Photoshop plugins folder, even though you carefully specify the latter during installation. Therefore, Photoshop cannot find them! It's alright for supporting files (Help files, preferences and the like) to be located in App Support, but not the 8bf files. I've never seen that before.

**I have gotten all of the AKVIS software titles to work properly by manually copying the files to the PS plugins folder.**

I've been over this a couple of times with the folks at AKVIS, explaining that this is not normal installation behavior (I'm not a software developer, but I install enough plug-ins to know how they should work!). They insisted the files need to remain where they are installed, but regardless, at the very least they need to be copied. I haven't tried deleting the App Support folder copies yet.

http://www.plugsnpixels.com/coloriage.html (my first attempts with Coloriage)

[iamback]

The actual plug-in and related parts ("thunk" files!) are installed under Hard drive>Library>Application Support>AKVIS LLC, instead of the Photoshop plugins folder, even though you carefully specify the latter during installation. Therefore, Photoshop cannot find them! Gosh - can't you just tell PhotoShop where to look for plugins? Then that is at least one thing where Paint Shop Pro clearly surpasses it: you just give it a list of directories (in addition to the default, or in place of, if you're so inclined) where to look for plugins - in fact, they can be on another machine and accessed over the network. I have PSP 8 and PSP X installed on Alan, the laptop, both using plugins on Grace, the "main" computer. The advantage, of course, is that it's easy to share Adobe-compatible plugins between a number of applications that can use them.

[plugsnpixels]

Sure, PS works exactly the same way, allowing for one additional folder to be referenced. The problem here is AKVIS is putting their files in an odd place. I prefer to use the proper PS plugins folder, rather than a stray secondary one just for a single developer's software.

[iamback]

Sure, PS works exactly the same way, allowing for one additional folder to be referenced. Only one additional one? That doesn't sound like "the same way" as PSP does it where in version 7 you can define three and as of version 8 you can define any number of directories, and control the order they're being searched - see attachments. Very useful since other applications may not have that flexibility, so you can install the (compatible) plugins in their plugin directory and still use them in PSP as well.

The problem here is AKVIS is putting their files in an odd place. I prefer to use the proper PS plugins folder, rather than a stray secondary one just for a single developer's software. I agree that if you tell the installer a location to put the files, it should honor that; but I can't judge whether its own default is "odd" though since I'm not familiar with standard directory structures on a Mac.

[Cristen Gillespie]

Just found this thread.

I've been over this a couple of times with the folks at AKVIS, explaining that this is not normal installation behavior (I'm not a software developer, but I install enough plug-ins to know how they should work!). They insisted the files need to remain where they are installed, but regardless, at the very least they need to be copied. I haven't tried deleting the App Support folder copies yet.

http://www.plugsnpixels.com/coloriage.html (my first attempts with Coloriage)

It does seem a bit unusual for PS plugins. Of course, we're spoiled since most plugins are released FOR PS, and other programs can use "Photoshop compatible" plugins, continuing to make PS the center of attention and the "way things should work." <BG>

I've not had spare time for any photoart for many months now, but Akvis' plugin remains on my list as a really fun way to colorize a photo. I do enjoy hand-tinting with a variety of PS methods--the long way--but despite the difficulty getting installed, the plug in ran smoothly and I'd like to see it continue to be developed.

I have virtually no plugins on the Mac, but I have Painter on it, so this one might become my first plugin for this machine. I can see them working nicely together. -- I once tried Virtual PC on a Mac. Thanks, but no thanks. I'll keep my Windows machine<G>

[Cristen Gillespie]

Gosh - I have PSP 8 and PSP X installed on Alan, the laptop, both using plugins on Grace, the "main" computer. The advantage, of course, is that it's easy to share Adobe-compatible plugins between a number of applications that can use them.

But, but...then you have PSP instead of PS, and who would want that? LOL

PS certainly isn't perfect. It can stand to learn a trick or two from other editing programs. It is becoming, gradually, a lot more "user-friendly," although there are those who can't stand the clutter of anything added since v4, and those (Jared springs to mind) who refuse to use anything later than v4.

Quite simply, nothing will tempt me to stray, not even multiple plug-in folders. I have been through a very time-consuming process learning PS, and switching means learning another interface, another way to accomplish the same thing. I have too many OTHER programs still to learn to want to duplicate my efforts for image-editing. I'm sure PSP users say the same thing. Easier to live with the drawbacks than to switch ;-)

[DeltaM]

hi there! last month new version of the Coloriage plug in has been released. It offers more flexibility in manipulation of colors on images.

akvis.com:
By request of our users we added the possibility to change not only the color of the object, but its brightness as well.
Now it is possible to color light areas with dark colors and vice versa – for instance, to recolor a white dress into red.also:
We introduced a "hot key" for the "Run" button - use the "R" key to start the colorization process.
Added the possibility to change the brush size for main tools (Pencil, Keep-Color Pencil, Eraser) independently of one another, streamlined the interface of the program.

[DeltaM]

The latest version of the plug in (v.4.0) offers more flexibility in manipulation of colors. Now it is possible to color light areas with dark colors and vice versa – for instance, to recolor a white dress into red.

[terrie]

deltam: hi there! last month new version of the Coloriage plug in has been released. It offers more flexibility in manipulation of colors on images.Thanks so much for letting us know about the update (http://akvis.com/en/coloriage/index.php)...

I hope to get a chance to try it this time round--never got it after Andrew posted about it in May 2005...

Terrie