I think what is missing when people think about colorization is how the the look, feel and fidelity of an image places it in our minds. It is less about the exa

I think what is missing when people think about colorization is how the the look, feel and fidelity of an image places it in our minds. It is less about the exact colors than the specific style of color palette that we have catalogued in our brains with all kinds of weird associations. Right now we think colorization looks great when it looks like a modern, natural palette from a photo shoot or movie, but it looks schmaltzy and cheap when it mirrors some 1950s over-saturated early foray into color film. We have those placeholders in our minds and quickly deduce which is good and which is bad. But those verdicts change over time because they are as much fashion as anything. For example, many Instagram filters emulated early film cameras but now people simply look at certain photos and dismiss them of they look too filtered. Or a new trend I've noticed in YouTube music videos where they are made to look like old VHS camcorder home movies for some ungodly reason. Those VHS artifacts are now a style choice because we've see interesting things that have those attributes and want to capture some of that spirit. Color is always going to be a style choice and colorization choices say as much about what we are used to seeing right now as they do about how things looked in reality back then... though they are weirdly and closely intertwined.