So-called ‘digital upscalers’ have turned grainy footage from bygone eras into high-quality 4k clips. However, Wired reported, some historians are not very happy about it.
Digital upscalers and the millions who’ve watched their work on YouTube say they’re making the past relatable for viewers in 2020, but for some historians of art and image-making, modernising century-old archives brings a host of problems. Even adding colour to black and white photographs is hotly contested. “The problem with colourisation is it leads people to just think about photographs as a kind of uncomplicated window onto the past, and that’s not what photographs are,” says Emily Mark-FitzGerald, Associate Professor at University College Dublin’s School of Art History and Cultural Policy.
Check It Out: Some Historians Don’t Like Digital Upscalers Making History 4K