# Half the face is a guess, and it says so

> A colourised photograph invents plausible colour from old tonal values. Splitting the portrait down the middle admits it, instead of presenting the guess as a fact.

August 19, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/colourising-an-old-photo

One face, cut down the middle by a hard vertical line. Left half sepia, faded, a grey collar and a
monochrome eye. Right half in full colour — the same collar now blue, the same eye now blue.

Nobody photographed this person in colour. One half of the line is telling the truth; the other is
a guess.

## What is a colourised photograph?

A monochrome photograph with colour added afterward, usually by software trained to infer plausible
hue from grey tonal values rather than by anyone who saw the original scene.

Skin, in a black-and-white print, sits within a fairly narrow band of grey regardless of the actual
skin tone, so a colourising process estimates from context — clothing, period, typical values for
that kind of print — and fills in a result that looks correct. It usually is close. It is not
verified.

## Why does the split matter more than a fully colourised version?

Because it's a plainer way to show the process, without pretending.

A photograph colourised end to end presents its guess as if it were a record, and most viewers have
no way to tell the difference between an inferred blue eye and an eye that was actually blue. The
split keeps both states in the same frame — the evidence on one side, the estimate on the other —
so the guess stays visibly a guess instead of quietly becoming a fact nobody agreed to.

## Why does colour on a face feel different from colour on a cardigan?

Because a face carries more of what a person actually looked like than a garment does.

[Partial hand-tinting works by choosing a small element to colour deliberately](/stories/three-generations-one-frame) —
a cardigan, a ribbon — and the rest stays grey by design. Colourising a face is a different kind of
claim: it's an attempt to answer *what did they actually look like*, which is a harder question and
a more contested one when it's wrong.

## Is it your call to make, or the family's?

Worth asking first, plainly.

A colourised ancestor is a strong statement about what somebody looked like, made on their behalf,
and reactions genuinely split — some families are delighted to finally see a great-grandparent look
present rather than archival; others find an invented eye colour upsetting precisely because it
looks so certain. If a colourist does the actual tinting work, their result is their own — a
commissioned addition, not a restoration of something that already existed.

## Does it work for a group rather than one face?

Yes, with the same split logic applied across the frame rather than to one face alone.

A group photograph split the same way — half the people rendered in colour, half left as the
original print — makes the same argument at a larger scale: this is what we think it looked like,
and this is what we actually have. It reads more like a diagram than a portrait once more than two
or three people are in it, which is a fair trade for the honesty.

## Isn't a guessed colour just wrong information dressed up as history?

It would be, if it weren't labelled as a guess — which is exactly what the split does.

A fully colourised photograph with no indication of what's invented is closer to that problem. This
version puts the estimate next to the evidence and lets a viewer judge the gap for themselves, which
is a different, more defensible claim than *this is what it looked like*.

## Does it print well?

Cleanly, because the contrast between the two halves is the print's main asset.

A hard vertical division reproduces well on fabric — it's a flat edge, not a soft gradient, and
[flat colour with a hard edge survives a print run](/stories/bold-shapes-survive-fabric)
in a way a blended transition wouldn't. Bone, cream or pale grey read closest to the sepia half;
keep the colour half naturalistic rather than oversaturated, or the split reads as a filter rather
than an argument.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the portrait at [JustOG](/) — which half stays as the original print and which gets the
colourised estimate. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment,
and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

One collar, two colours, and just one of them is true.