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Have you ever seen your grandparents’ wedding photos? How about your great-grandparents’ baby pictures? If you’ve got an album full of ancient, black and white family photos just collecting dust in your attic, wouldn’t you like to see those same images in vibrant colors?

Allow me to introduce you to the Colorized Twitter account, which is dedicated to “breathing a second life into black and white photos”. This page features a wide variety of colorized, historical photos, including anything from a picture of Black Sabbath in the 70s to a portrait of Vincent van Gogh’s sister from 1874.

Below, we’ve gathered some of Colorized’s most captivating images to share with you all, so be sure to upvote all of the pictures you find most stunning. Let us know in the comments what photos you’d like to have colorized yourself, and then if you’re interested in checking out a few more Bored Panda articles featuring vintage, black and white pics that have been brought to life with color, you can those right here and here!

More info: Colorized.com | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

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The Colorized Twitter account was launched in December 2020, and it’s already amassed over 8.2k followers who can’t get enough of its stunning colorized photos. However, Colorized is much more than purely a Twitter account. That’s only one facet of the online presence of Colorized’s website, which allows anyone from around the world to upload their own black and white pictures and have them revived with vibrant colors within seconds.

According to their site, “Colorized is a brand that represents a community passionate about bringing colorful optimism to the darkest parts of humanity through unique and high quality storytelling.” It was created in 2020 by childhood best friends Justin Levine and Will Gwyn, who previously founded HistoryDaily.org and GroovyHistory.com.

“We owe the inspiration of Colorized to our loyal following who engage with our history content every day,” the founders explain on their site. “The positive feedback on colorized history photos on GroovyHistory and HistoryDaily has been unprecedented. And to meet the excitement of our readers for the colorized history content, we have created Colorized.com.”

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Colorized also has a mission of giving back to the community, as their website states they are “committed to bringing colorful optimism to the darkest parts of humanity through conscious capitalism”. “By combining social responsibility with business growth, we create a sustainable impact that enhances the lives of our team members, our partners, as well as people around the planet,” the founders write.

“The more readers we reach, the stronger our community becomes and the more real and measurable difference we’re able to make. Through increased contributions to meaningful charities, we are working to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges.” They also note that they are focused on supporting life-saving clean water projects, hunger initiatives, mental health research, poverty abatement projects, animal rescue, Cancer and Alzheimer’s research and much more.

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If you’re interested in learning more about many of these colorized images of famous figures or historic moments, Colorized.com is the perfect place to begin your studies. The site shares many articles, covering a variety of topics such as “Famous Photos Explained”, “What Life Was Like…”, “Rare Celebrity Photos Colorized”, “Major Historical Events”, “Art”, “Machines”, and more. If you’ve ever wondered what a college campus looked like in the 1980s or what the first rolls of toilet paper looked like, this website is the place for you. You can learn countless fun facts and stories from history, while viewing fascinating photos that have been brought back to life through colorization.

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Black and white photos certainly have a unique charm, but it’s great to live in a time where we have the option of whether we want our photographs in color or not. We tend to feel more connected to colored photos because they are more relatable to us. They don’t appear to be from a time capsule or an age that lived completely differently; we can’t distance ourselves from them. These were real people who existed on the same planet that we do; they just happened to have less advanced technology. A colorized photo can instantly transport us back in time, but it makes us feel like we fit in, rather than stand out. I don’t know about you, but I certainly feel more connected to my grandmother when I see a photo of her at age 25 in color. She looks almost exactly like I do now; the resemblance is uncanny.

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If you’re still not convinced of the benefits of having colorized photos, we consulted this article from Paso Robles Daily News discussing why colorizing photos can be so great. The first point that they note is that colorizing an old picture does no harm to the original image. “[It] used to mean that someone will take your precious family heirloom and color it manually, so there is an assumption that coloring photos could damage them. But that is simply not the case now. With technology like Photoshop, you don’t have to sacrifice your black-and-white photo to colorize it,” Access Publishing explains.

“With modern colorization services (like those offered at IRC), you simply send in your photo – or even a picture of your photo – to be colorized. It’s all done digitally so you can keep your original and negatives.”

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Colorizing a cherished family photo can also be a wonderful, heartfelt gift for a relative. “Many people are sentimental about old photos – breathing new life into them by colorizing them will get you loads of props at the next family gathering,” Access Publishing notes. “Don’t forget to put them in a proper frame and package them nicely! It makes a big difference when you go the extra mile to display your colorized photo as a work of art. And make no mistake, it is!”

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Adding colors to our old photographs can also enrich the images by bringing out more details. “Freckles and other lighter textures can sometimes get lost. In vivid color, those textures come to life more, making them more prominent and easier to pick out,” Access Publishing explains. “If you are looking at old photos for clothing and patterns, those kinds of details can often get lost in the black-and-white medium. Colorization can make those patterns more visible and prominent especially in the time periods when flashy colors were in vogue.”

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Colorizing our vintage photographs can even teach us more about our world’s history. “Maybe you have photos from the Civil War, and colorizing [them] will help you get a better idea of which side they fought on. Or if the photo is from the turn of the century, you can see the colors in the outfits that were popular,” Access Publishing writes. “Seeing history in living color is a fascinating experience because it humanizes the people that you see in the photos. Suddenly, they aren’t just historical figures – they are people who had jobs and lives, wore fancy clothes, and went off to war… Not unlike many people today!”

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Are you feeling like you’ve stepped into a time machine? We hope you’re enjoying this list of stunning, colorized vintage photos, pandas. Don’t forget to keep upvoting the images that give you a blast from the past, and let us know in the comments which photos you’d like to have professionally colorized. Then, if you haven’t already checked out our previous articles featuring beautifully colored historical photos, you can find more right here and here!