Scenario 4 – Fading Colors in Photographic Collections

Historical photo collections experience colour degradation and this is what the fourth scenario will be focused on. There are two types of photos that we believe are more in danger of losing their original appearance: the authocromes and the kodacolour collections, whose colour was made with specific “lost” techniques. How can we set back the clock and digitally acquire / reconstruct them, reproducing the original colour? Most of these photos were made for personal use and not by a professional photographer. They represent therefore personal real-life moments of the last century, costumes, traditions, architectures, that in some cases do not exist anymore. In this case, how can we reconstruct and reproduce their original colour? How can we adopt automatic AI techniques in an ethical way?

Two different sets of objects were selected for this scenario:   

• [case study 1] Autochromes (V&A, HSLU, Fraunhofer, NTNU)   

• • [case study 2] Kodacolor films (NTNU, Fraunhofer, HSLU)