Gettysburg in Color: Volume 1: Brandy Station to the Peach Orchard. This item is unavailable.Gettysburg in Color: Volume 1: Brandy Station to the Peach Orchard

Artificial Intelligence meets Gettysburg. And it is a marvelous pairing.

Author Patrick Brennan, a long-time student of the Civil War, published author, and an editorial advisor for The Civil War Monitor magazine, has teamed up with his technology-astute daughter Dylan Brennan to bring the largest Civil War battle to life in striking life-like colors in this remarkable two volume study.

Rather than guess or dabble with the colors, as so many do these days, the Brennans used an artificial intelligence-based computerized color identifier to determine the precise color of uniforms, flesh, hair, equipment, terrain, houses, and much more. The result is a monumental full-color study of the important three-day battle that brings the men, the landscape, and the action into the 21st Century.

The deep colorization of battle-related woodcuts, for example, reveals a plethora of details that have long passed unseen. The photos of the soldiers and their officers look as if they were taken yesterday.

The use of this modern technology has also solved a couple lingering mysteries. It not only helped pinpoint the precise location of one of Gettysburg’s most famous “death” images, but determined that two of the seven “Union” dead depicted were in fact Confederates. As Pat Brennan explains, that may also be a “first” when it comes to Civil War photography: “It was long believed this was an image of seven dead Union soldiers. In fact, only five are Union men. The other two are Confederates. I am still researching the issue, but I believe this may be the only photo we have from the entire Civil War that portrays dead from both sides.”

Gettysburg in Color: Vol. 1: Brandy Station to Little Round Top and Vol. 2: The Peach Orchard to Falling Waters, will be out in July 2022 and include nearly 300 photos, paintings, drawings, and woodcuts colorized utilizing the latest in color-recognition software, together with Brennan’s unique digital painting techniques, incredible 3-D maps, and his own extensive research.

A life-long student of the Civil War, Patrick Brennan is a nationally recognized music producer and composer known primarily for his work creating music scores for hundreds of broadcast documentaries. Pat’s work has also appeared on dozens of albums from jazz and rock to funk and hip-hop. He served as a historical consultant for the History Channel, Discovery, and National Geographic, is active in battlefield preservation, and is the author of the critically acclaimed Secessionville: Assault on Charleston (1996) and To Die Game: Major General Jeb Stuart (1998), part of Farnsworth House Commander series. Pat has contributed articles to Blue & Gray and North & South magazines and sits on the latter’s advisory board. He lives in Wilmette, Illinois, with his wife Sheila.

Dylan Brennan was born in 1995 on the anniversary of the Battle of Secessionville. She graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a degree in Cinema Arts and Sciences. Dylan currently works at tastytrade, a financial network that produces 10 hours of live programming every weekday. She is the Master Control Operator in the post-production department where she hones her skills in Photoshop, the primary software she uses in the colorization process. In her free time, she enjoys shooting film photography and collecting too many houseplants.