Stuart Humphryes

Stuart Humphryes (born 10 December 1969) is an English multimedia artist for print, film and television, and a social media content creator, chiefly known for his work enhancing early colour photography.

His photo enhancement book The Colors of Life was published in 2023.

He first rose to prominence colourising the British television series Doctor Who.

In 2005 Humphryes colourised Tele-snaps for issue 2 of Nothing at the End of the Lane – the magazine of Doctor Who Research and Restoration – in which he was interviewed about his colourisation work.

He is widely known by his alias "BabelColour", a public persona that was created in 2006 with the launch of his YouTube channel.

Humphryes is principally known for the enhancement of early colour photography, such as Autochromes and Paget plates.

He has popularised the autochrome process amongst the general public, with over 200,000 followers on his autochrome-enhancement Twitter feed.

In interviews, Humphryes has stated that his photographic enhancement work includes the following steps: The digital removal of physical flaws; the restoration/recreation of any missing sections of the image; removal of dirt and blemishes; removal of staining or colour bleed; re-adjustment of saturation and luminance levels; colour rebalancing; noise reduction; and the employment of deep learning neural-network algorithms to remove grain whilst enhancing detail definition.

He returned to this publication in 2008 to colourise the cover of their omnibus reprint of issues 1 and 2.

In 2012 Humphryes wrote a treatise on Doctor Who entitled 'Teatime and an Open Mind' for the non-fiction book You and Who.

The book's editor J. R. Southall wrote in Starburst Magazine, "That internet legend from YouTube, known usually as BabelColour, submitted a much longer essay. It was an excellent piece of writing, and very important for a couple of reasons... it kind of gave the whole project a feeling of legitimacy. Now I could tell people that Stuart Humphryes had made a submission already, and even quote an extract from it as an example".

In November 2014 Humphryes was one of the "big names in the Whovian community" interviewed by the Houston Press for his positive critical opinion of Series 8 of Doctor Who.

In 2015 Humphryes colourised the cover of Mark Iveson's biographical reference book Cursed Horror Stars.

In August 2018 the Edinburgh Evening News ran an interview with Humphryes about his restoration of colour film of 1930s Edinburgh.

In February 2019 the London Evening Standard ran a feature on his colourisation work.

Humphryes stated, "I try to be bold with my colours – most colourisers seem frightened of the medium and make their work pastel and faded. I’m of the opinion that if I’m going to add colour I may as well go the whole hog and make it bold and bright and colourful. That’s what real life should be, after all!"

In May 2020 - to mark the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day - the Royal Mail issued commemorative coin presentation packs which included colourisation work by Humphryes.

In October 2020 The National newspaper printed a feature on Humphryes and his autochrome enhancement work.

The article focused on the Gulf region and consisted of an interview and restoration galleries.

The December 2020 and January 2021 issues of the US-based Wild West magazine included restoration and photo colourisation work by Humphryes, who had employed artificial neural networking to reconstruct and enhance the face of Billy the Kid from the only verified tintype photograph of the outlaw.

In March 2021, the French youth magazine Topo ran a 2-page feature on his photo enhancement work, focusing on the French roots of the autochrome process and its use during World War I.

The June 2021 Doctor Who Magazine issue #564 published a 4-page article written by Humphryes on his search for, and eventual restoration of, missing photographs of director Christopher Baker.

In August 2021, The Simple Things Magazine, issue #110, featured Humphryes' autochrome enhancements with a recommendation to follow his Twitter and Instagram accounts.

However, the magazine unintentionally published the wrong Twitter account details

On 3 September 2021, The Times ran a 2-page article about the optical illusion of colour assimilation, prompted by a viral tweet by Humphryes, whom they interviewed about the phenomenon.

On 18 July 2022, the Portuguese news magazine Visão ran a feature and interview with Humphryes, exploring his photo enhancement work

In January 2023, The Radio Times interviewed Humphryes about his former colourisation work on Doctor Who and his opinions relating to the prospect of new colourisations for the series' 60th anniversary

In September 2023, Humphryes released a large format art book entitled The Colors of Life, which collated over 200 of his enhanced autochromes and paget plates.

The book was released by German publishers Gestalten

On 3 October 2023, The Guardian's Eyewitness centre-spread ran a feature of photographic enhancements by Humphryes, to mark the publication of his book The Colors of Life.

This newspaper article ran in tandem with an online feature

On 12 October 2023, The Times ran a feature on Humphryes' enhancement work and book.

The December 2023/January 2024 issue of PrintWeek ran a three page interview/feature with Humphryes focusing on his photographic restoration & enhancement process.

Humphryes runs the Babelcolour account on Twitter.

In June 2020 he began tweeting early colour photographic enhancements.

He has over 200,000 followers (as of October 2022)

On 15 September 2022, Humphryes tweeted original colour footage from the 1952 Lying-in-state and funeral procession for the late King George VI.

This tweet went viral and was subsequently featured by The Independent, The Guardian, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Star and LADbible and was discussed on Jazz FM radio.

In October 2021, his series of enhanced Paget plates, originally taken by Frank Hurley during Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, were featured by Live Science

On 30 August 2021, his viral tweet of Øyvind Kolås's colour assimilation grid prompted an article in various tabloids and The Times.