Pan American once dominated the aviation world and now a young Frenchman has brought outdated black and white photos of his planes back to life in brilliant color.

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In his latest endeavors, 24-year-old Frenchman Benoit Vienne has been working on Pan American’s classic DC-4, DC-6, DC-7 and DC-7C propliners that dominated the late 1940s and 1950s.

For Mr Vienne, coloring is a passion that started years ago playing historical video games. That passion was sparked when he discovered colored photos on the internet.

“I was so impressed by the feeling that a colorized photo can evoke.

“Many young people feel a bit distant when they see a black and white photo, but when it is colored in, the feeling is very different.

“When you see a colorized photo, you feel connected to the people. You connect.”

But it is far from a simple process that requires hours of painstaking work.

“Colorizing a black and white photo can take a lot of time and sometimes you have to fix it first,” says Mr. Vienne.

“The colorist’s goal is to bring back to life a moment captured through a photograph. When you color in, you bring people back to life, it’s a kind of second life for them.”

“Of course, most colorists (myself included) try to respect the colors of the past. If you color a photo of a soldier or an airman, you must respect the colors of that time.”

But first, Mr. Vienne had to master Photoshop – an art in itself.

“I started coloring in early 2015, but it was very difficult to use Photoshop because it was my first time using the program.”

But months of practice had paid off big time: Mr. Vienne colored hundreds of military photographs of British, French-American and German soldiers, as well as civilian portraits and weddings.

For AirlineRatings.com, Mr. Vienne has colored hundreds of images of airline interiors and aircraft, which have proven very popular with the website’s millions of followers.

Mr Vienne has also done work for Qantas and Boeing.

Many of the colored images of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas have also been returned to the Boeing historical archives.