The online virtual museum site Fritir uses the latest technologies in the restoration and coloring of historical bw photographs.
The closure of society during the coronavirus years awakened many to notice how fundamental a role culture plays in our lives. The fact that it was no longer possible to participate in various events caused many to experience an undefined depression. With this in mind, we explored cultural life in Turku at the turn of the 20th century, before independence, and the years of the civil war—the rise of the Finnish language and national culture against Russianization efforts related to this period. At the same time, society developed with industrialization. It was a lively and social time to begin with, but still, the diversity of cultural and artistic pursuits of the era surprised us. The newspapers of the time were full of announcements about the events. The possibilities were endless: theater, film, singing festivals, music events, visual arts, and literature. In addition, the townspeople spent their leisure time playing sports, skiing, swimming, and playing. If this wasn't enough, the city's numerous parks, restaurants, and cafes offered more entertainment.
The Fritir website aims to offer a view of this lively and modern cultural Turku between 1880 and 1917. Photos have been collected from several museums in Turku and elsewhere. What makes the site special is that old historical black-and-white photos have been restored and colored using the latest digital methods.
A black-and-white picture preserved for more than 100 years can be considered perfect with all the signs of wear and tear: it is a genuine document of the past and does not need anything more. This site has examined the possibilities of image processing rather as an alternative. Could it open up new pictorial meanings?
In our time, photographs are mainly in color, and black and white is perceived as stylizing. Thus, a color photograph is naturally approachable to modern people; its contents are more easily enlivened. The main goal for us creators has been to animate the vision of Turku at the turn of the century, to bring the viewer closer to the subject, as it were.
Today, effective methods for restoring and coloring photographs are developing constantly. The images on the Fritir website use several different software programs that, in addition to traditional image processing, offer work tools based on artificial intelligence. Without new powerful tools, a project of this scope would not have been possible.
Removing every little scratch by painting by hand would have been an enormous task in practice. With the help of artificial intelligence, it has been possible to rationalize this part of the process. The project as a whole has been a research trip on how to process historical photographs. Still, each picture is always an individual, which is noticeable when coloring pictures. Some images didn't work when colored, while some were made to shine by the algorithms.
The truthfulness of the colors caused reflection. At their best, the algorithms reach an entirely believable and natural result and reproduce colors relatively correctly. Sometimes, when defining colors, we have to resort to interpretation. To support image processing, you must look for other historical material, e.g., preserved objects and early color photographs. However, reaching perfection is impossible: coloring is always an interpretation to some extent. However, the colored pictures create a fascinating vision, hopefully enticing you to think about the past and life in a new way.
