Apollo 8: 50 yrs ago 1st human organisms escape earth orbit, 2nd earthlings to reach Moon.

The first earthrise photo taken during Apollo 8 was a black & white photo, but this guy went and remastered it using colour information from the subsequent photos.

So, ladies and gentlemen, behold, the sight that made the Apollo astronauts go WOW!

Oh my God, look at that picture over there! There's the Earth comin' up.
Wow, is that pretty!

Those were the first words out of Bill Anders's mouth when he saw the Earth coming 'round the bend as Apollo 8 orbited the moon on December 24, 1968. He quickly snapped a black & white picture with the camera he'd been using to photograph the moon's surface, and then called to his colleagues for color film. It took a while for them to find the film, and the Earth kept moving away from the lunar horizon, but a minute later he snapped two more frames in color which became the iconic image of the planet known as "Earthrise." The view that first struck Anders, though—of the Earth just slipping into view—was recorded only in black & white.

A couple years ago I made a "2K" composite of the color and black & white images, but earlier this month I discovered higher-resolution 4 and 5K scans of the original 70mm frames and set about making a new version. The black & white frame is very crisp and, when stacked with the color frames, can be sharpened to a remarkable degree. The picture above is the result: Bill Anders's first black & white photo, with colors on the Earth supplied by the two later color shots. The lunar surface is from the black & white image, tinted slightly and brightness-adjusted to match the appearance of the moon as seen in modern DSCOVR satellite pictures of the moon transiting the Earth.

jw9c.blogspot.com...

The idea behind the image I posted above is so simple, I'm surprised it hadn't been done before (as far as I'm aware).

I love the idea of using colour information for a high-rez b&w image from another image, so I went ahead and recreated this procces for that iconic Apollo 8 photo:



Full-sized crop of Earth:



I used very high-rez scans found at Flickr:
www.flickr.com...
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www.youtube.com...

Just coincidence, but from Houston this morning the ISS made a spectacular lunar flyby.

a reply to: wildespace

I have a B&W image I want to try this with - what's the best way of taking the colour information from one image and applying it to a different B&W one?

originally posted by: OneBigMonkeyToo
a reply to: wildespace

I have a B&W image I want to try this with - what's the best way of taking the colour information from one image and applying it to a different B&W one?

If the images match in terms of objects, size, and composition, it makes it very simple. Otherwise (like with this image) you'll have to do some image manipulation.

But the basic method is very simple: overlay a colour image over the b&w one (or the other way round), and use layer blending of either "color" or "saturation". That will plug the colours into the b&w image.

a reply to: wildespace

Yeah I think that's my problem. The B&W image (while it is Earth) looks completely different to the colour ones I want to borrow the information from, and sometimes it's difficult to see where clouds end and ocean begins. I think I'm stuck with the good old fashioned painting by numbers method (convert to CMYK, add adjustment layers etc etc). Very tedious!

originally posted by: OneBigMonkeyToo
a reply to: wildespace

Yeah I think that's my problem. The B&W image (while it is Earth) looks completely different to the colour ones I want to borrow the information from, and sometimes it's difficult to see where clouds end and ocean begins. I think I'm stuck with the good old fashioned painting by numbers method (convert to CMYK, add adjustment layers etc etc). Very tedious!

You can try doing it nontheless, with some image rotation and eraser tool. But a perfect alignment is how this method is supposed to be used.


(false-colour Hubble photo + true-colour astrophoto)