Photo Colorizer API

About Photo Colorizer

Natural color for black-and-white photos, two to three times larger.

Call it with the model name popnow/photo-colorizer-v1/edit on POST /jobs/createTask, from $0.06.

Introduction

Photo Colorizer adds natural color to black-and-white, sepia and faded photos. The only input is image_url; the colors of skin, hair, clothing, sky and buildings are inferred from the shapes and tones in the picture.

Request

{
 "image_url": "https://example.com/grandparents-1958.jpg"
}

What we saw in testing

A 768×1152 black-and-white portrait of a man on a rooftop came back after about 17 seconds as a 1664×2496 JPEG: warm skin, a brown jacket, a white T-shirt and an orange sunset behind a blue city skyline. A 1024×576 photo of two people at a bar came back at 2848×1600 with green and red wine bottles and a cream sweater. The woman's hair came out brown, while the color photo we had converted had red hair, which is the kind of guess to check.

We also colored a scratched sepia scan after running it through Old Photo Restorer. The restored-then-colored portrait had even skin and a clean sky.

Tips

• Repair scratches and dust first with Old Photo Restorer (/api/photo-restorer-v1); damage confuses the coloring.
• If you know a color for certain (a uniform, a car, a dress), fix it by hand afterwards.
• Keep the black-and-white original and label the colored copy when you publish historical images.

Request parameters

Pricing

Prices are in USD. The API uses a separate USD balance. Website credits cannot be used or transferred to it, and API funds cannot be transferred to website credits. When a task is accepted, we reserve the maximum quoted amount from your API balance. On completion, we charge for actual usage, never more than the hold, and release the remainder. If the task fails, the hold is released.

Send the same request body to POST /jobs/quote to see the estimated and maximum USD charge before running. A quote does not run the task or charge your balance.

API quick start

Call the Photo Colorizer API in three steps

1. Create an API key. Sign in to PopNow and create a key in the API console. Keys start with sk-popnow-. API calls use your separate USD balance.
2. Send the request. POST /jobs/createTask with model popnow/photo-colorizer-v1/edit and an input object that follows the parameter table. The response returns a task ID straight away.
3. Get the result. Poll GET /jobs/recordInfo with the task ID, or pass a callBackUrl and we post the result to it. Download the output links when the task succeeds.

# 1. Create the task. Keep the Idempotency-Key if you retry after a network error.
export IDEMPOTENCY_KEY="$(uuidgen)"
curl -X POST https://api.popnow.ai/api/v1/jobs/createTask \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $POPNOW_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: $IDEMPOTENCY_KEY" \
  -d '{
  "model": "popnow/photo-colorizer-v1/edit",
  "input": {
    "image_url": "https://media.popnow.ai/influencer/examples/marco.webp"
  }
}'

# 2. Copy data.taskId from the response, then poll until state is succeeded, failed, canceled or expired.
TASK_ID="TASK_ID_FROM_RESPONSE"
curl "https://api.popnow.ai/api/v1/jobs/recordInfo?taskId=$TASK_ID" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $POPNOW_API_KEY"

Replace the prompt and any links with your own. The API tab has the response, polling and callback reference.

Photo Colorizer API questions

More about Photo Colorizer

Try it

Photo Colorizer AI Image Generator onlineCreate images with Photo Colorizer in PopNow

Docs

Photo Colorizer model ID and input schema in the API docsPopNow API quickstart: send your first requestImage generation guide for the PopNow APIWebhooks: get Photo Colorizer results without polling