A bit off topic but really neat

Folks, a friend sent me this link today, saying I just had to check it out, and he was right- this is amazing. It’s one of those things that’s incredibly obvious (if you’re a Photoshop geek) once you hear it. Basically, this guy was the photographer to the last czar, responsible for documenting Russia during the period up to 1912.

What he did was shoot three separate images of each shot, each one taken through either a red, green, or blue filter. He still ends up with three black-and-white plates, but (and here’s where the Photoshop geeks will already have guessed what he did), if you then project all three, passed through the same color filters you shot them with, all aligned and on top of each other, you should end up with a very good color photo.

What these folks have done is scan the original plates, filter, align, and composite them in Photoshop, and you have absolutely gorgeous and accurate color photos of Russia, all from before 1912.

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/