Winter Sale!

Days
Hours
Minutes

Phil Johnson

England's

Historic Properties

I am generally interested in England’s historic buildings but I have a specific interest in two properties; Birnbeck Pier in Somerset, and Witley Court in my home county, Worcestershire. 

Birnbeck Pier

My absolute passion is Birnbeck Pier. 

I have been collecting images and information on this structure for over 35 years and have become something of an expert on its history.

It was constructed between 1864 and 1867 and many thousands of photographs exist of it, going all the way back to its opening day. Inevitably, all of them, until 1965, are black and white.

After I purchased a good computer with a 69cm, 5K display and plenty of processing power, I decided that I really did need to see how some of the old images would look in colour on a large screen. I wanted to be able to recreate the scenes as they would actually have appeared with completely naturalistic colours and toning. 

Color research

Over years of research, I have found information regarding the original colours that were used to paint the pier, as well details about the colours of the paddle-steamers that landed passengers at the pier, the colours of the maritime flags that were used to decorate the pier and, of course, the colours of the clothing that Victorian and Edwardian visitors to the pier would have worn.

 

 

Control over every pixel

It was critical to be in complete control of the colourising.

It was not important for me to be able to complete colourisations quickly or automatically, but it was essential to be able to complete them accurately, with colour control available down to individual pixels if necessary.

Codijy Pro appeared to provide me with what I wanted and I have been extremely pleased with it. 

I have gradually increased the size of my projects as I have found that on very high resolution original black & white images, Codijy can produce images that, if sufficient attention is given to creating the mask, cannot be distinguished from actual colour photographs.

About Phil

Phil is a hobbyist colorizer from UK.