About Us
OldHKinColour focuses on colourising and animating old Hong Kong photos by using artificial intelligence and post-editing methods, with a view to promoting public education in history.
Revisiting the History of Hong Kong through Colourised Images
OldHKinColour focuses on colourising and animating old Hong Kong photos by using artificial intelligence and post-editing methods, with a view to promoting public education in history.
The exhibition features colour versions of 20th-century images enabled by artificial intelligence. These were contributed by OldHKinColour, an Instagram account that breathes colour into the old black-and-white photos of Hong Kong.
潮流興復古、懷舊，你又知唔知道150年前嘅 舊香港係咩樣呢？喺2019年創立嘅 Oldhkincolour 就喺世界各地搜集黑白原圖，再利用機器學習技術 同人工神經網路系統 提高佢哋嘅質素同解像度，配以後期編輯，力求將照片回復最真實色彩！經修復嘅舊相除咗紀錄唔少街道同地標呢幾十年嚟嘅變化，亦呈現當年新界居民嘅生活面貌！
The team at OldHKinColour specialises in using AI and digital-editing methods to restore black-and-white historic photos of Hong Kong. They look for three things in the selection process: what does the photo tell us about the customs of those times? Does it reveal the living conditions of different social classes? Does it give us a glimpse into the urban and rural landscape of the territory?
歷史是甚麼顏色的呢？
黑色？白色？灰色？時間總是讓過去的故事慢慢變得黯淡冰冷，然而那個我們回不去的時空其實亦曾經有血有肉、充滿色彩！
於兩年前成立的專頁 @OldHKinColour 便嘗試為歷史「重新上色」。
今回から始まりますコラムは、インスタグラム「Old Hong Kong in Colour」上で、古い香港の写真の色付けとアニメーション化を、教育目的で施し、公開している団体からインスパイアされました。
一群來自香港的研究人員，兩年前在Instagram開設帳戶「Old HK in Colour」，透過人工智能（AI）及後製技術，為香港舊照添上色彩和動態效果。
With ground-breaking technologies and research, popular Instagram account @OldHKinColour attempts to capture the fascinating street screens of a past Hong Kong once forgotten.
名為「OldHKinColour」的團隊，由研究數位人文、人工智能、符際翻譯等範疇的香港學術研究人士組成，成立一年多，在Instagram已有逾六萬追蹤者。他們處理的照片橫跨19至20世紀，反映出香港不同年代的風土人情與城市變化。
A group of academics is using its Instagram account, Old HK in Colour, to share an incredible collection of painstakingly enhanced and colourised photos from Hong Kong's past.
The Instagram page OldHKinColour features vintage images of Hong Kong which have been colourised, or colourised and animated, with a view to promoting public education. HPC invited the team running the project, which has used some of our images, to provide an introduction to their methods and objectives.
曾有人說過「六、七十年代以前的香港是另外一個世界。」隨著經濟急速發展，香港的城市面貌有著很大的改變，不少人想從舊照片中回顧昔日香港，可惜大部分都是黑白舊照，未必能反映當時最真實的一面。有見及此，網上有一班由八、九十後學術研究人員組成的團隊，在 Instagram （IG）開設帳戶 “Old HK in Colour” 分享以人工智能（A.I.）技術重塑色彩的香港舊照，並添加動態效果，讓大家可以透過色彩圖像認識香港歷史，並藉以推廣保育文化。
Recolouring old photos, and even moving films, brings out more details and makes the objects or subjects come alive. And that is one of the reasons that Old HK in Colour started their recolouring project with resulting pictures published on their Instagram account @oldhkincolour – currently amassing more than 13,000 followers, with new pictures posted daily.
Colourization of old photographs is not new but has become increasingly more accessible with AI technology. Now giving us a glimpse of Hong Kong in the good ole’ days, complete with full colour is @OLDHKINCOLOUR.