Palette

AI

image colorization

SHOW HN2022

472points
120comments
#62of 2,570 in 2022
Top 3%of 2022 by points

How HN took it

LovedMost comments that take a side are positive

50 positive, 24 neutral or asking, 9 mixed, 5 critical, out of 88 comments about the project. Thread score +0.53.

Performance: 21 for, 3 againstIdea: 6 for, 2 againstExecution: 4 for, 0 againstPricing: 3 for, 0 againstDesign: 1 for, 0 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Results are realistic and impressive, especially skin tones and natural scenes

    From 3 comments
    • Even if the results are not 100% historically perfect, 99% of the hard job is done. Skin tones, plants, skies, water... they all look incredibly good, and the object segmentation…
      Valgrim on HN
    • Thank you so much Emil - I have some old photos B/W of my dad who is no longer with us and have wanted to colorize them somehow for years. The results from just dropping the…
      callumprentice on HN
    • The ease of use,speed and accuracy are impressive. I tried doing a colorization by hand a few years ago using photoshop. It took a long time and it was not as good. Over the…
      WheelsAtLarge on HN
  • Natural language edits and captions are useful and easy to use

    From 2 comments
    • I was actually testing Photoshop's new colorizing filter this week, so this is timely. My first impression of Palette in comparison is that it does a comparably good job of…
      jbellis on HN
    • I love the way it finds features and labels the picture. It thinks I am a meteorologist!
      JoeAltmaier on HN
  • Free and easy to use, emotionally moving for family photos

    From 2 comments
    • I've never posted here before but this demands a sincere "thank you". I just colorised some family photos from the 1930s to the 80s and the results are heartwarming. Thank you…
      default-user on HN
    • Wow, it’s awesome! What technologies does it use? I’ve used to restore the only photo my wife has of her father who died when she was 3yo. She almost cried seeing the colori ed…
      afalzetti on HN

Objections

  • Colors can be washed out or wrong, e.g. fabrics and string instruments

    From 2 comments
    • Even if the results are not 100% historically perfect, 99% of the hard job is done. Skin tones, plants, skies, water... they all look incredibly good, and the object segmentation…
      Valgrim on HN
    • I tried it on the photo linked below and it makes the string instruments look like they're made of brass. Not trying to bash it since I thought it was pretty impressive overall,…
      writeslowly on HN
  • Old photos may be made to look dull or unhistorical

    From 1 comment
    • Unfortunately, this has the common bias[1] with IA coloring of making old stuff look dull, reinforcing the Hollywood cliché[2]. The past was actually often very colorful. [1]:…
      littlestymaar on HN
  • Uploading private photos raises privacy concerns, no proper privacy policy yet

    From 2 comments
    • Nice UI, and the approach works quite well (occasional wrong choice of palette compared to ground truth). It’s kind of fun to turn my photos into B/W and run through the model to…
      tanvach on HN
    • Wow, any way to run this locally? I love this technology but it would feel kinda terrible to upload a whole bunch of stuff to your site and exploit your generosity.
      WrtCdEvrydy on HN

Requests

  • Run locally or offline

    From 1 comment
    • Wow, any way to run this locally? I love this technology but it would feel kinda terrible to upload a whole bunch of stuff to your site and exploit your generosity.
      WrtCdEvrydy on HN
  • Higher resolution output beyond 1920px

    From 2 comments
    • All I can say is: very very nice (Testing on some 3d renders and some bw photos). p.s. Is output image width limited to 1920px?
      brontosaurusrex on HN
    • ty!! yes, 1920x1920. i'm working on an unlimited resolution option, but it will take a few weeks.
      emilwallner on HN
  • Colorize comic books and video frame by frame

    From 2 comments
    • Very cool. Your results look much better than the washed out AI colorization that I've seen in the past. I think you could charge money for this service. A suggestion for…
      waltbosz on HN
    • This works amazingly well, just putting in some of my favorite black and white scenes from movies... wow! Now I need some kind of tool that can do this on every frame of a black…
      kmnc on HN
  • API access or licensing for other tools

    From 2 comments
    • Any chance you would license the model for us to use with pixlr.com?
      poniko on HN
    • This is absolutely mind-blowing to me, is this using an API of any sort? I'd love to be able to take something like my City's archive of Black & White images and colorize them.
      w_for_wumbo on HN

Questions

  • How the model was trained and how it differs from DeOldify

    From 2 comments
  • Whether the site is open source

    From 1 comment
    • Open Source? Would love to see how this works and also the website.
      vanillax on HN
  • How the captions and prompts are generated

    From 1 comment
    • How are the prompts/captions generated? Also I love that you're using Svelte!
      jaflo on HN

Alternatives named

  • DeOldify

    From 2 comments
    • Awesome job! This makes me a bit envious. I am hobbyist colorizer [1] who did it the old school way (with tools like Affinity Photo and lot of manual work). I tried de-oldify and…
      shubhamjain on HN
    • How does this differ from deoldify?
      diamondage on HN
  • Photoshop's new colorizing filter

    From 1 comment
    • I was actually testing Photoshop's new colorizing filter this week, so this is timely. My first impression of Palette in comparison is that it does a comparably good job of…
      jbellis on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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