AI · 2026 · Built alone, January 2026
AI Manga Colorizer
A desktop colorizer that keeps the lettering readable, because diffusion kept eating the ink.
I did not want a watercolor of a balloon
January 2026 I tried the fashionable diffusion colorizers and they painted over the words like the words were a suggestion. I wanted a desk tool: drop a page, or a folder, and get color that still respects the ink. Manga Colorization v2 is a GAN that cares about that. FastAPI runs the engine. Electron and React are the desk: single, batch, a reader with a toggle.
The backend looks at the machine. MPS on this Mac, CUDA if I am on a friend's tower, CPU if I am being punished. It is a finished app with a boring job, which is my favorite kind.
The toggle is the whole review
I still open a page, flip original and color, and grin when the balloon is still a balloon. That is the demo. Not a gallery. A working surface. Same local-inference habit as BashaBridge and SVD, applied to stills I care about.