General John A. Logan

Lost Cause

1st Lieutenant
Joined
Sep 19, 2014
Logan.jpg
 
Getting better. :smile:

My advice is to never leave anything uncolored. Even if the bowtie would've been black, give it a faded (very faded) blue, same with the cuffs. As for the buttons, make them more towards the orange spectrum, same with the shoulder ranks.
 
Awesome!

* Union General
* State Senator
* Father of Decoration Day (Memorial Day)
 
Very nice pic. I had the honor of reading Gen. Logan's order for Memorial Day at a local ceremony at a veterans cemetery this past year. Moving words, indeed.
 
Lost Cause -

Your first two colorized postings are great! To follow on with what Zuzah wrote I would suggest (in addition) a few things that might help:

1. Obtain larger images to work with. It is actually easier to do colorization when you have larger images to work with. You can get into the detail much easier that way.

2. Watch for overlapping color, If you look at his mustache it appears that you put some of the skin tone color over the flesh.

3. To follow with what Zuzah said about covering all areas, it appears to me that there is a small triangle of missing color under is left eye.

4. Facial hair should be the same color as the hair on his head, (unless there is a good reason, i.e. gray bear/mustache). In this case it appears that his mustache was not colored at all

5. Research the age of the individual (if possible) to help determine features such as hair color. In this case Logan was promoted to Major General in November of 1862, so the image was most likely taken between 1863-1865. Being born in 1826 that would put him between 37-39 years of age. In that case the colorization of his hair looks about right for this image. If you had found (for example) that he was between 57-59 then you might have expected some gray visible in the hair. It also helps if he/she are very well known to research hair color. Early colorization's I did for Sherman and Laura Keene showed both of them with brown hair, while they both should be redheads!

As was noted in a previous post with a nickname like "Black Jack" looking closer at hair color may reveal more. I found these period colorization's of him here. All seem to show very dark hair. The online "John A. Logan Museum" as well as the "John A Logan College" give no comments as to hair color. (Note at one time there was a "John A. Logan college Museum that was part of the JAL college. The existing links appear to no longer work, it may be worth sending an inquiry to the college asking for the current link.

6. Studio background. It appears that the background for this image is uncolored. Typical studio images (specifically Brady's who this image belongs) had been painted blue color. While it may appear gray in the final B&W image it would not have been that way at the time of his sitting.

7. Finding the right color. As Zuzah mentioned the brass looks a bit "bright" I would suggest for all colors that you sample an image of the color you would like it to be and then apply that to your image. For example if you find a period civil war button, or a brass horn or bell sample that color in Photoshop to get the right color to use. I have created a library of colors for specific items so that I can quickly apply them. Never, never, never look at a color chart and say "Oh, that looks about right, I will use that for this part of the image."

8. Finally keep experimenting! I can't tell you how many times Zuzah and I have chatted via Skype and share our failures from early images! Oh, the stories they tell! If you look here you will find early example for both of us and see how we have changed over time. For only your 2nd colorized image you are doing well. Have a look at some of our early stuff to get a good laugh.

Thanks again for sharing the image, I look forward to seeing more!

David
 
Lost Cause -

Your first two colorized postings are great! To follow on with what Zuzah wrote I would suggest (in addition) a few things that might help:

1. Obtain larger images to work with. It is actually easier to do colorization when you have larger images to work with. You can get into the detail much easier that way.

2. Watch for overlapping color, If you look at his mustache it appears that you put some of the skin tone color over the flesh.

3. To follow with what Zuzah said about covering all areas, it appears to me that there is a small triangle of missing color under is left eye.

4. Facial hair should be the same color as the hair on his head, (unless there is a good reason, i.e. gray bear/mustache). In this case it appears that his mustache was not colored at all

5. Research the age of the individual (if possible) to help determine features such as hair color. In this case Logan was promoted to Major General in November of 1862, so the image was most likely taken between 1863-1865. Being born in 1826 that would put him between 37-39 years of age. In that case the colorization of his hair looks about right for this image. If you had found (for example) that he was between 57-59 then you might have expected some gray visible in the hair. It also helps if he/she are very well known to research hair color. Early colorization's I did for Sherman and Laura Keene showed both of them with brown hair, while they both should be redheads!

As was noted in a previous post with a nickname like "Black Jack" looking closer at hair color may reveal more. I found these period colorization's of him here. All seem to show very dark hair. The online "John A. Logan Museum" as well as the "John A Logan College" give no comments as to hair color. (Note at one time there was a "John A. Logan college Museum that was part of the JAL college. The existing links appear to no longer work, it may be worth sending an inquiry to the college asking for the current link.

6. Studio background. It appears that the background for this image is uncolored. Typical studio images (specifically Brady's who this image belongs) had been painted blue color. While it may appear gray in the final B&W image it would not have been that way at the time of his sitting.

7. Finding the right color. As Zuzah mentioned the brass looks a bit "bright" I would suggest for all colors that you sample an image of the color you would like it to be and then apply that to your image. For example if you find a period civil war button, or a brass horn or bell sample that color in Photoshop to get the right color to use. I have created a library of colors for specific items so that I can quickly apply them. Never, never, never look at a color chart and say "Oh, that looks about right, I will use that for this part of the image."

8. Finally keep experimenting! I can't tell you how many times Zuzah and I have chatted via Skype and share our failures from early images! Oh, the stories they tell! If you look here you will find early example for both of us and see how we have changed over time. For only your 2nd colorized image you are doing well. Have a look at some of our early stuff to get a good laugh.

Thanks again for sharing the image, I look forward to seeing more!

David

Thank you for your detailed response. I will definitely take your advice to help improve future photographs. It is amazing how far the quality of colorized photographs have come in recent years. That is a testament to the depth and time spent on the photographs and the enhancement of software that converts them. Respectfully submitted,

LC
 
Thank you for your detailed response. I will definitely take your advice to help improve future photographs. It is amazing how far the quality of colorized photographs have come in recent years. That is a testament to the depth and time spent on the photographs and the enhancement of software that converts them. Respectfully submitted,

LC

Out of curiosity, what software are you using? Are you doing this with a mouse, or do you have a drawing pad?
 
"Recolored" with a mouse

Recolored is a quick way to get into colorization's. If you want to grow and expand your skills you may run into it's limits fairly quickly. Recolored was released with version 1.0 in 2005 and followed up with 1.1 in 2010. There have been no updates since. Personally I am always a bit concerned about software that has had only one small change in nearly 10 years of existence and it took five years to get to that change. Both Zuzah and I use Photoshop due to it's use of layers. There is a free version (Photoshop CS2) for download direct from Adobe. This is available for both PC/Mac.

While the learning curve is much higher (compared to Recolored) it will allow you to go in and play with each layer to get the results you want. With Recolored (from what I have seen) to make significant changes requires essentially re-doing the image. While this can be quick for the initial work, you may find it frustrating if you have to play with a particular aspect to get it right. That said, ultimately you are the one that needs to be happy with the results. If you are happy, then this is the right tool for you. Doing the same image in Photoshop would take 3-4 times as long and the learning curve will be tough. That said, there is a much larger user community with Photoshop to call upon than there is with Recolored.

One of the biggest differences (in my opinion) is the ability to layer multiple colors on a single area. Looking at both of your colorization's the skin tone looks fairly flat (one dimensional). I suffered exactly the same issues with the first several hundred colorization's I did. I started seeing colorization's from others that had more "life" in them and started looking for the answer. Zuzah shows very good examples in his tutorials available on this site on how to layer color. Once I made this change the quality of my work doubled overnight.

As to using a drawing pad or mouse. Since you are using recolored, then the drawing pad is not critical. If you choose to move to other software you may run into limitations with the mouse.

Keep posting, would love to see more!
 
Recolored is a quick way to get into colorization's. If you want to grow and expand your skills you may run into it's limits fairly quickly. Recolored was released with version 1.0 in 2005 and followed up with 1.1 in 2010. There have been no updates since. Personally I am always a bit concerned about software that has had only one small change in nearly 10 years of existence and it took five years to get to that change. Both Zuzah and I use Photoshop due to it's use of layers. There is a free version (Photoshop CS2) for download direct from Adobe. This is available for both PC/Mac.

While the learning curve is much higher (compared to Recolored) it will allow you to go in and play with each layer to get the results you want. With Recolored (from what I have seen) to make significant changes requires essentially re-doing the image. While this can be quick for the initial work, you may find it frustrating if you have to play with a particular aspect to get it right. That said, ultimately you are the one that needs to be happy with the results. If you are happy, then this is the right tool for you. Doing the same image in Photoshop would take 3-4 times as long and the learning curve will be tough. That said, there is a much larger user community with Photoshop to call upon than there is with Recolored.

One of the biggest differences (in my opinion) is the ability to layer multiple colors on a single area. Looking at both of your colorization's the skin tone looks fairly flat (one dimensional). I suffered exactly the same issues with the first several hundred colorization's I did. I started seeing colorization's from others that had more "life" in them and started looking for the answer. Zuzah shows very good examples in his tutorials available on this site on how to layer color. Once I made this change the quality of my work doubled overnight.

As to using a drawing pad or mouse. Since you are using recolored, then the drawing pad is not critical. If you choose to move to other software you may run into limitations with the mouse.

Keep posting, would love to see more!

Thank you for the advice. I am already finding limitations with recolored.
 
Thank you for the advice. I am already finding limitations with recolored.

I am not one to tell you what tool is best. The right one is the tool that works for you. In the hands of a master a cheap violin can sound like a Stradivarius.

That said, if you are just starting out you owe it to yourself to explore several different tools before deciding the one for you. Personally I researched 5-6 options and tried 2-3 before deciding that I was going to use Photoshop.

One of the limitations I can tell you right now that you will face with Recolored is TIF files. Currently the best images available today are from the *Library of Congress and all of their large image size files are stored as TIF. Recolored, sadly, does not support opening or using TIF files.

*Note: As of this last week the largest size TIF files are having issues downloading from the LOC. I checked with several others, including Zuzah who reported the same issue. I reported this to the LOC and they are aware and working on the issue. At the current time the solution is to download the smaller TIF file (which has no issues and is still very large) or have someone go to the LOC in Washington to obtain your files. Hopefully they will resolve this soon.

Update Nov. 17. Download issue appears to have been resolved. I was able to obtain and open largest size with no issues.
 
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I am not one to tell you what tool is best. The right one is the tool that works for you. In the hands of a master a cheap violin can sound like a Stradivarius.

That said, if you are just starting out you owe it to yourself to explore several different tools before deciding the one for you. Personally I researched 5-6 options and tried 2-3 before deciding that I was going to use Photoshop.

One of the limitations I can tell you right now that you will face with Recolored is TIF files. Currently the best images available today are from the *Library of Congress and all of their large image size files are stored as TIF. Recolored, sadly, does not support opening or using TIF files.

*Note: As of this last week the largest size TIF files are having issues downloading from the LOC. I checked with several others, including Zuzah who reported the same issue. I reported this to the LOC and they are aware and working on the issue. At the current time the solution is to download the smaller TIF file (which has no issues and is still very large) or have someone go to the LOC in Washington to obtain your files. Hopefully they will resolve this soon.

Thank you for the information. I will check out the Library of Congress.
 
Thank you for the information. I will check out the Library of Congress.

The LOC Civil War images can be found here:

Civil War Negatives
Brady/Handy Collection (mostly studio images includes General Logan)
Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs (mostly ambortypes & tintypes of individual soldiers)
Stereograph cards (not specifically Civil War, but there are 685 Civil War images here, all of the Civil War ones have been downloaded and compiled into a single set here for $24.95)

The National Archives has there Civil War collection available on FLICKR The size and quality lacks after using the LOC ones, but there are some that only exist here. You can also search NARA directly here. There are a few images that don't appear in the FLICKR site. There search options was recently updated. Good news is you can search for more items (previously restricted to 2,000 entries) bad news is that it is not as easy or well organized as the LOC.
 
The LOC Civil War images can be found here:

Civil War Negatives
Brady/Handy Collection (mostly studio images includes General Logan)
Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs (mostly ambortypes & tintypes of individual soldiers)
Stereograph cards (not specifically Civil War, but there are 685 Civil War images here, all of the Civil War ones have been downloaded and compiled into a single set here for $24.95)

The National Archives has there Civil War collection available on FLICKR The size and quality lacks after using the LOC ones, but there are some that only exist here. You can also search NARA directly here. There are a few images that don't appear in the FLICKR site. There search options was recently updated. Good news is you can search for more items (previously restricted to 2,000 entries) bad news is that it is not as easy or well organized as the LOC.

Looks like quite a few pictures to choose from, especially with higher pixel quality and no copyright restrictions.
 
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