Re: [Wikitech-l] Automatic image colorization

[Tim Starling]

On 04/05/16 05:21, Ori Livneh wrote:
> Colorization
> 
> refers to the process of adding color to black-and-white photographs. This
> work was historically done by hand. These days, colorization is usually
> done digitally, with the support of specialized tooling. But it is still
> quite labor-intensive.
> 
> A forthcoming paper
>  from
> researchers at Waseda University of Japan have developed a method for
> automatic image colorization using deep learning neural network. The
> results are both impressive and easy to reproduce, as the authors have
> published
> their code  to
> GitHub with a permissive license.

Impressive, yes, but with lots of ridiculous errors. For example, the
ground often ends up green even when it's a road:

http://colorizr.io/image.php?uuid=cdcc0b2f-dc9e-4592-938b-b1146f75ecb5
http://colorizr.io/image.php?uuid=b868719e-b59a-42ed-ae9b-27f2a52fe246

Clothing is apparently always brown:

http://colorizr.io/image.php?uuid=a94e5ff7-25a1-4e61-b1be-b54f8301708d
http://colorizr.io/image.php?uuid=3f5dadcb-912c-40fb-82fa-b52dde6d280b
http://colorizr.io/image.php?uuid=687cb8e6-0031-443c-83b4-37d403a7fd34

Red is randomly splashed around with no apparent pattern:

http://colorizr.io/image.php?uuid=9567aab8-a94d-488d-a4b1-40b746649757
http://colorizr.io/image.php?uuid=3cce1ab2-b866-4ca6-b713-d7f49e392ab2
http://colorizr.io/image.php?uuid=d6d65eed-94e0-4a86-a772-057975d1a18c
http://colorizr.io/image.php?uuid=debdc3f9-369b-494f-929d-5cf5a5b38712

Sometimes feature identification fails spectacularly:

http://colorizr.io/image.php?uuid=44d1c028-074d-4162-be65-4200569b89d2

Is it good enough for Wikipedia? Even the best examples have subtle
defects.

> Should we have a bot that can perform colorization on demand,
> the way Rotatebot  can
> rotate images?

Well, Rotatebot uploads images without review.

-- Tim Starling


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Re: [Wikitech-l] Automatic image colorization

[Matthew Flaschen]

On 05/03/2016 03:21 PM, Ori Livneh wrote:

In this thread, let's discuss how this technology could be integrated with
the projects. Should we have a bot that can perform colorization on demand,
the way Rotatebot  can
rotate images?


A couple notes:

* This could go in https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ImageTweaks 
when that's ready.


* This should go to a separate destination file (which it appears 
ImageTweaks already supports), since unlike rotation (which can be 
lossless and doesn't fundamentally change the essence of the image), 
colorization is a complete transformation, and it's worth preserving 
both old and new in some cases (e.g. historical images from archives).


Matt Flaschen

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Automatic image colorization

[Matthew Flaschen]

On 05/03/2016 06:31 PM, Rob Lanphier wrote:

Matt, I agree that they probably picked an inappropriate license.
However, we shouldn't assume that the people picking the license
have a very sophisticated understanding of licenses.  It might be
worthwhile to ask the authors why they chose CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 instead
of a free license (like MIT, Apache, GPL or AGPL).


You're right.  This is a good point and I'm glad Ori contacted them.


Ori, this is a fantastic find!  I haven't created this wiki page
yet, but I think it should exist:


It'd be really awesome if
 contained a pointer
back to this discussion.

That is, of course, that people reading this list agree is
interesting.  Anyone here against colors?  ;-)


Not at all.  I sent my previous message a bit too hastily since I was 
about to go into a meeting, so I neglected to mention:


This is a really cool idea and a neat project (with very impressive 
results if the example images on GitHub are representative).  I hope the 
authors are willing to release their work under an open source license.


Matt

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Automatic image colorization

[Ori Livneh]

On Tue, May 3, 2016 at 3:31 PM, Rob Lanphier  wrote:

> It might be worthwhile to ask the authors why they chose CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
> instead of a free license (like MIT, Apache, GPL or AGPL).  If we
> approach them respectfully, we might convince them to learn more about
> our ideals, and change the license on their software.
>

Good idea. I sent a note to the authors to explain why the non-commercial
clause is incompatible with "open source" and to encourage them to release
the code and model under a permissive license. I will share any updates
with the list.
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Automatic image colorization

[Rob Lanphier]

On Tue, May 3, 2016 at 2:59 PM, Matthew Flaschen
 wrote:
> On 05/03/2016 03:21 PM, Ori Livneh wrote:
>> A forthcoming paper
>>  from
>> researchers at Waseda University of Japan have developed a method for
>> automatic image colorization using deep learning neural network. The
>> results are both impressive and easy to reproduce, as the authors have
>> published
>> their code  to
>> GitHub with a permissive license.
>
> Unfortunately, this is not an open source license, and thus we should not use 
> it.  It uses Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0.
>
> Creative Commons consistently recommends against any use of CC licenses for 
> software, and this one in particular is not libre or open source because it 
> has a non-commercial restriction.

Hi Ori and Matt,

Matt, I agree that they probably picked an inappropriate license.
However, we shouldn't assume that the people picking the license have
a very sophisticated understanding of licenses.  It might be
worthwhile to ask the authors why they chose CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 instead
of a free license (like MIT, Apache, GPL or AGPL).  If we approach
them respectfully, we might convince them to learn more about our
ideals, and change the license on their software.

Ori, this is a fantastic find!  I haven't created this wiki page yet,
but I think it should exist:


It'd be really awesome if
 contained a pointer
back to this discussion.

That is, of course, that people reading this list agree is
interesting.  Anyone here against colors?  ;-)

Rob

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Automatic image colorization

[Matthew Flaschen]

On 05/03/2016 03:21 PM, Ori Livneh wrote:

A forthcoming paper
 from
researchers at Waseda University of Japan have developed a method for
automatic image colorization using deep learning neural network. The
results are both impressive and easy to reproduce, as the authors have
published
their code  to
GitHub with a permissive license.


Unfortunately, this is not an open source license, and thus we should 
not use it.  It uses Creative Commons 
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0.


Creative Commons consistently recommends against any use of CC licenses 
for software, and this one in particular is not libre or open source 
because it has a non-commercial restriction.


Matt Flaschen

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[Wikitech-l] Automatic image colorization

[Ori Livneh]

Colorization

refers to the process of adding color to black-and-white photographs. This
work was historically done by hand. These days, colorization is usually
done digitally, with the support of specialized tooling. But it is still
quite labor-intensive.

A forthcoming paper
 from
researchers at Waseda University of Japan have developed a method for
automatic image colorization using deep learning neural network. The
results are both impressive and easy to reproduce, as the authors have
published
their code  to
GitHub with a permissive license.

Someone has already taken this code and packaged it as a simple webapp,
available at http://colorizr.io/ (NSFW). The webapp lets you upload
black-and-white pictures and colorizes them for you. (The site is currently
not safe for work because it displays a gallery of recent uploads. We know
how that goes.)

In this thread, let's discuss how this technology could be integrated with
the projects. Should we have a bot that can perform colorization on demand,
the way Rotatebot  can
rotate images?
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