The very first film colorization was seen in the early 20th century. But the process was still not known to many people and was not in common use till it became popular with the start of digital image processing.

The first film colorization technique was done by hand by individuals with the help of watercolors, paints, and dyes. Initially, the process was invented by Canadian Wilson Markel. This technique was first used in the year 1970 to add color to monochrome sorts of the moon from the Apollo program mission. It was in the 20th century that the use of colorization was made incredibly popular among the upper-class people.

Colorization might have earlier begun as a hand-drawn technique. The hand-drawn technique of colorization was time-consuming and too laborious. But slowly and steadily this method became out of fashion with the advent of a new technique which was digital colorization. With digital colorization images were more exquisite and required less time.

It was in the 1970s that Wilson Markle started a practice of digital colorization, it was computerized colorization. It was hard and simpler to hand-drawn method but the only difference was, here computers were used. Studios were able to revive black and white images by coloring each object digitally in each frame until they are fully colored. As years passed, with time colorization became global and an integral part of aesthetic and archival photography.