Time-Travel Rephotography Uses AI to Determine Actual Skin Color, Light Effects on Hundred-Year-Old Photos

Time-Travel Rephotography has debuted a new way to restore images, despite being hundreds of years old that use artificial intelligence (AI) to determine skin color and lighting when it was taken. Most photo restoration tools have been close approximating the skin color of an image, which produces inaccurate results compared to the new technology.

Photo and video restorations can bring back the joy and beauty of old memories, especially as people are known to be reminiscent of the past events that have occurred in their lifetime. May it be historically relevant or personal, restorations bring a massive help in letting people experience it during the modern era, using technology.

Time-Travel Rephotography AI Photo Restoration

According to a team of researchers from the University of Washington, University of Berkley, and Google Research, Time-Travel Rephotography aims to deliver the accurate skin color and lighting of its source. And what is the original source? Those are the people whose portraits were taken hundreds of years ago, using low-quality cameras which produced black and white images.

Despite the three-color image imagination by James Clerk Maxwell being released in the late 19th century, the world was still using black-and-white imaging in the early to mid 20th century era. The progression of technology was slow due to limited knowledge and resources compared to now, which have progressed to full-frame color cameras.

The team's technology "rephotographs" the portraits and images taken during the early days to correctly determine the color of different elements present in the photo. This includes skin color, background, wardrobe, and other objects that were shined upon by light and has color on them. All objects in the world have colors, despite being in monochromatic shades like black or white.

Getting the Right Skin Color with Time-Travel Rephotography's AI

The team led by Xuan Luo and Xuaner Zhang has created an AI software that claimed that it correctly determines the light present in the photo to capture the color accurately with its technology. The researchers have experimented on portraits of popular personalities of the early days, which had their photos taken with black and white, low-quality cameras.

The research led by Luo described on their papers and videos narrate how the artificial intelligence technology they created can travel back in time to get the images and successfully capture the colors present. Here, different details can also be "rephotographed" or captured by the AI, which goes beyond colorization and photo restoration.

While there is no technology present in the world that gives humans the ability to go back in time, this is the closest way of traveling in an era where history was captured using an imaging device such as a camera.

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Written by Isaiah Alonzo