I'm trying to generate my own pilot photos, and I'm not fully satisfied with the results...they just look like a modern photo that's been made B&W. There's some aura or atmosphere or effect or whatever that's present in photos from that era that I haven't figured out how to capture yet.




Any tips/suggestions? I'm using Serif PhotoPlus.

Try using a little sepia tonal on the photos and just a very little unsharpen.

Before you proceed further Alb, the question you need to ask yourself is how much can a Koala bear? They are so young and eucalyptus leaves are in short supply at the front.

I'm not familiar with Serif PhotoPlus, but the following works in the Free & Open Source GIMP, for something like this:


https://imgur.com/a/zDUfCoc

The image I've done isn't perfect by any means, but it's a step in the right direction - you can go over the settings over and over again, fine tuning for as long as you like

As it's different software, the specific names of options might be different, and specific numbers aren't going to help, but the general gist should work.

Very roughly, newer cameras are sharper in detail, and have a higher tonal range, so you get subtlety of tone that didn't exist in older cameras.

You're looking to blur and resharpen the image, to get rid of a bit of detail, and you're looking to wash out the tonal range a bit - basically saying "everything lighter than this shade of grey is maximum white" and "everything darker than this shade of grey is maximum black" - then you're lowering the contrast between that white and black.

You could follow a similar set of steps to this:

1) Gaussian blur - just very slightly to take the sharpness out
2) Hue & Saturation - drop saturation to 0 to take the colour out
3) Levels - bring the input black and white inwards slightly, and the output black and white inwards slightly - you're aiming to lower the contrast in the middle, and have a higher amount of light tones wash out into white, and darker tones into black - but your output black/white are actually dark/light grey.
4) Curves - as with levels, you're just adjusting the specific contrast of different parts of the image. I bent the curve up a little bit near the middle.
5) Colourise - tint the grey image to a very light brown. You can refine it after.
6) Hue & Saturation - drop the saturation a bit to get a reasonable sepia.
7) Add noise - add a bit of grain to the image. Be subtle, not too much
8) Levels - again, finer tuning to bring a bit of the grain out
9) Gaussian blur - again, just very slightly
10) Sharpen - fairly subtly, it just breaks the smoothness of the blurring
11) Hue & Saturation - use the hue shift to get your preferred tone of green/brown/yellow for the sepia.
12) If you wish, go through 1-11 again to refine.

If you want a faded border on it, which tends to be a trend in portraits from the earlier half of the century, then:
13) Select an oval
14) Invert that selection
15) Feather the edge of the selection (so it fades, rather than is sharp)
16) Pick your lightest or darkest tone in the colour picker
17) Fill the selection
18) Adjust levels or brightness/contrast to bring it in line with the rest of the image.

sorry for taking so long to get back to you, just wanted to give a shout-out and say this is beautiful and super-informative. Thank you so much! Gonna try this and let you know how it goes.

No worries, and glad it's potentially useful!

I ran the same process on some humans as well as the example Koala - which might show up a bit clearer, as you can compare these to existing pilot photos in game etc.

https://imgur.com/a/KHTUpbe
These are obviously recent (well, maybe not so recent now!) TV characters, dressed in a roughly appropriate era of uniform, which I've degraded through the process listed above. One I've really knocked the quality down (maybe a bit too much?), the other is a bit more subtle (maybe a bit too little?).



They're not perfect, but if you think of these as pretty much 5-10 minute edits, you could clearly refine them a lot further, or do a few things a bit more or a bit less, but you're generally using that same set of image tools, and roughly moving in that same direction - getting rid of some tones of light and dark, and blurring and resharpening some of the details.

You can always use a reference image from the era, and try to copy its tonal range, or particular variation of sepia/black & white, but bear in mind that there'll be a lot of variety in quality, depending on available lighting, the specific camera and how the image has been stored in the (roughly) 100 years since it was originally printed.

Anyway, give it a go, and if you get stuck, feel free to ask any questions. Good luck!

Tried some tinkering with what was suggested. Gave these black markings to make it look more "ruined" and authentic, if you get what I mean. Surely not perfect, but I've been flattered by how realistic a screenshot made in game can look.

Here's your Flasheart with a simple Paint.net conversion to BW then to Sepia.

Does this serve?

epower,
While the colors are pretty nicely rendered in my opinion, it misses the grainy look and the blurring often found in pictures of the 1910s

I like that - I've not tried with a game screenshot. Great idea!

@Pol did some beautiful B&W conversions in the WOTR Pics thread. My fav is here https://SimHQ.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4550515/re-wotr-pics#Post4550515 . The head-on one is the only WWII image to make my background image rotation.

Here is an amazing video I came across this morning in reference to this exact subject, however, it's based on the American Civil War battlefield Gettysburg. Now, it's over 1 hour long... BUT...jump through the content and look at the amazing work done on these photos that were taken in the 1860's!! It's surreal to see these images now colorized and how it effects the overall depth of the photo as well as the interest level. It's fantastic to see something that is so old, suddenly come to life with a new story and new details just by being able to process the photo and colorize it.




I agree about the photos in WOFF BH&HII... I love the new look and really appreciate seeing the planes and personnel around them in full color. It adds so much more atmosphere to the game and brings you even closer to what life must have been like at that time.

Again, I know the content of this video may not interest many, but you have to appreciate the work that goes into deciphering the photo, where it was take, who was in it, and what it meant to the war efforts. I hope you enjoy it...if not just for the work that went into colorizing them.

OvS

I think there needs to be a lot more footage transformed like this - it looks great for us, and would help connect younger people to history more.
The transformation into more 'relevant' videos is amazing, a higher res version would be good to see.

On a side note there's a show about the 1930's including the build up to the war using home movies that were actually shot in expensive colour film of the day which bring it to life more than any of the usual B&W footage from then can.
"The Thirties in Colour"
not sure if it's available everywhere;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yHdVLrUFi4
again res not great

Fantastic! Thanks for sharing this Pol. A very interesting and fascinating period in history on many levels.