Image colorization

Introduction

Colorization is a computer-assisted process of adding color to a monochrome image or a movie:


original black-and-white image	colorized image

The aim of this project was to create a fully interactive colorization algorithm, capable of real-time working with several megapixel images - a property, most currect algorithm do not possess.

Results

We have devised a colorization algorithm, based on GML GrowCut. A user just marks some pixels with desired colors and the algorithm automatically propagates indicated colors to the remainder of the image. Our algorithm, having not been specially optimized, colorises 1 megapixel image approximately in 15 seconds. The most important thing is that refining is almost instantaneous in contrast to other algorithms, which require the whole recomputation after even slightest refine.