Two Young Men, Sepia to Colour

The photograph

Two young men standing outdoors in work clothes, with buildings and open ground behind them. Mid twentieth century, and from the light, somewhere warm.

The damage

The print had faded to a pale, flat sepia with pronounced grain. Faces were soft and low in contrast, edges had begun to break up, and there was very little tonal separation between the men's clothing and the ground behind them.

The work

Grain has to be handled before colour, or the colour sits on top of the noise and the result looks like a tinted photocopy. I rebuilt the tonal separation first, then recovered as much facial detail as the original would give. The colourisation used the greyscale values themselves as evidence: the darker shirt reads as a saturated navy, the lighter one as a mid grey-green, and the ground as pale dry sand. Where the original gives no clue, I say so rather than inventing certainty.

This was a black and white photo colourisation job — see more on black and white photo colourisation.