1953 Bowman Pee Wee Reese

[JollyElm]

Usually the skin tones are the most revealing telltale signs of B/W to color manipulation, but the scan is too small to really study them. One odd thing to note, too, is the way there is seemingly an oval-esque framing to the picture, where the outlying areas (all 4 corners) are unnaturally darkened. These days, you can do that in photoshop in a split second. Not sure if that provides evidence supporting or refuting colorization, but there was clearly work done to the original image.

[Volod]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

Usually the skin tones are the most revealing telltale signs of B/W to color manipulation, but the scan is too small to really study them. One odd thing to note, too, is the way there is seemingly an oval-esque framing to the picture, where the outlying areas (all 4 corners) are unnaturally darkened. These days, you can do that in photoshop in a split second. Not sure if that provides evidence supporting or refuting colorization, but there was clearly work done to the original image.

Good point about the strange darkening on the edges of the image. I had always assumed that it was the result of some sort of photo development goof, but perhaps you are right. I agree that the color image seems too well developed and detailed for the usual kind of colorization process employed at that time. Bob Lemke had some interesting comments about the '53 Bowman set and his attempts to produce a replicard from a monochrome photo using colorization:
http://boblemke.blogspot.com/2014/04...on-custom.html