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If you have an old black and white photo, you may want to see that picture in beautiful colour.  With modern digital technology it is possible to convert black and white to colour photos.  The process that is involved is both easy and difficult at the same time.

Converting old photographs form black and white to colour is easy because the technology is available that makes it possible to add colour to a digital photo at the click of a button.  The process is difficult because the actual image enhancement cannot be automated. All of the steps necessary to fix old photos must be done by a technician.

Whether you are doing a colour conversion, or you want to have photo restoration the steps required are very similar.  It does not matter if the photo was taken last week or 50 years ago, many of the processes are the same when turning an old photo to colour.

It starts by scanning the original photo into a computer.  This converts the original image into a digital image.  Now there are two photos; the original, and the digital copy.  At this point all of the image enhancements are done to the digital image.  The original photo is not changed or altered in any way.

Now the process of colourising the image gets more difficult.  There are not computer programs that can guess what color a piece of clothing is, or what shade of blue the sky was, that must all be done manually.  A technician must look at the picture and use his own imagination and experience which can be quite time consuming depending on the complexity of the photo.

If you look at any picture you will notice that items are not a single consistent color.  There are many textures and shades that need to be accounted for.  A shirt, while technically one single colour shows up on photos with folds and wrinkles that cast shadows.  Each of those shadows creates a different shade that needs to be colourised, along with the main colour of the shirt.

Photo touch ups like this take time to accomplish.  If the process of changing from black and white to colour is rushed the end result can look unnatural.  In order to capture all of the texture and interest of the original photo that technician needs to be allowed to spend the time necessary to get the best results.

When time and care are taken, the process of converting from black and white to colour gives you a picture that people will not realize has been digitally altered.  The copy will look like it is an original photograph.