Be still my heart.
MyHeritage just introduced a new tool to colorize black and white photos. You can colorize several photos for free, but you’ll be promoted to either sign in to your account or sign up for a free account.
Their blog article explaining the details is here.
If you are a MyHeritage subscriber with photos attached to your tree already, you can sign in, click on Family Tree, then on Photos. Your photos will display. You can then click on any photo, or enter the “colorize photos” function directly.
As a subscriber any photos you colorize will automatically be stored here for you.
I just clicked on a photo to select it, then on the colorize button.
When you click to colorize the displayed black and white photo, your original will remain unchanged.
This is my mother and the colorized version looks very much like her in life. Just kind of took my breath away. What a difference.
If you’re not a MyHeritage subscriber and want to try for free, or want to jump right in, the direct link to colorize a photo is here.
This is SOOOO easy.
Just upload or drag and drop the photo onto the target area of the page, and that’s IT.
CAUTION – DO NOT OVERWRITE THE ORIGINAL PICTURE ON YOUR SYSTEM WHEN DOWNLOADING AND SAVING THE COLORIZED VERSION.
Then…..it’s just a few second as you wait for your photo to come to life.
Either move the line with the slider arrows or click on the color icon in the top right of the photo.
Are you ready? Pull back the curtain!
You can click right beside the photo to share.
Of course, I posted this to Facebook and tagged my family members. They knew my Mom and will enjoy this immensely, I’m sure.
Valentine’s Day
It’s two days before Valentine’s Day. Just think what you can do!
How about colorizing a “first baby photo” of a family member with their mother?
Home from the hospital. This photo was taken to send to Dad in service.
How sweet is this? A first time Mom and her baby boy.
Now fast forward in time 18 years.
That’s baby boy’s wedding. Perfect for Valentine’s Day. Even black and white that’s supposed to be “black and white” looks much improved with skin tones.
But there could be more.
How about that baby boy’s grandfather.
And his Mom’s dancing photos!
Here he is at Christmas, on the far right. I’m the baby😊 Who knew my dress was that pretty? My brother is giving me the side eye, but nothing like my cousin on the left who seems thoroughly disgusted with the entire picture taking thing.
Or how about ancestors who were born in 1847 and 1848! His hair is kind of wild and no, I have no idea what that is on or by his nose. Maybe a flaw in the photo?
Here’s the same couple, a couple decades older. They died more than a hundred years ago, yet we can see them in loving, er, I mean living color, today.
Their son was a photographer, traveling to family reunions to take pictures, so I’m guessing that these photos were taken between 1895, or so, when the son would have become an adult, and 1918 when both ancestors passed away, just a few months apart. Wouldn’t he be amazed today!
Lazarus Estes (1848-1918) and Elizabeth Vannoy (1847-1918)
Look, you can even see the dirt on his work pants. It looks like you could just reach out and touch these people.
The opportunities are endless and the results are AMAZING.
I may never get anything else done.
What series of photos can you bring to life and create a colored collage through time? What a great gift, if not for someone else, for yourself.
Try it out!
Thank you, thank you, MyHeritage!!!!!!
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As an editor, I’ve always been fascinated by how we can change pictures. We can reduce red-eye with Photoshop. We can colorize pictures with various editing software. It’s honestly really cool.
On your thread in Genealogy Squad, I posted one of the four colorizations I made. They all came out looking pretty decent. I showed my parents and for the most part things looked accurate to how everyone looked. I just wish we could capture my great-grandfather’s piercing blue eyes in a pic. His son and grandson have REALLY blue eyes. I did a double take when I saw ’em.
The colors seemed saturated. I bet if I toned them down a wee bit, things might look less saturated. I’ll play around with the editing software I have and see how it goes.
There is one pic I want to see colorized. But, I’m honestly not sure how it would turn out. Might be too grainy: https://www.wikitree.com/photo/jpg/Ferraiolo-5
I can give it a shot!
Nice pics, by the way! What’s with the side eye from the kid on the right in the one with the Christmas tree? Kid looks up to something!!
Anyway, I am going to see what else I can do with these pics. I have a few others I’d like to see colorized. Cool tool!
And again, your mother was gorgeous! Beautiful hair and very feature, perfect! She certainly had her “day in the sun.”
Thank you.
Your Mum is so pretty, and I must say your results are great (better than mine..) It’s a great tool and I think by the Facebook comments I’ve been seeing that half the genie world is trying it out!
From the MyHeritage blog:
“Anyone can colorize several photos for free. Afterwards, a subscription is required.”
I have a data subscription only, and hit the “several” limit after 10. It is unclear when/if that will reset. Deleting one of the colorized images didn’t unlock the ability to do more. I don’t know if I’ll be able to colorize more after hours, or not until I pay.
I believe that 10 is the limit and I doubt that it resets. MyHeritage is clearing hoping people see the benefit and at least try a trial subscription.
I was able to colorize 10 pictures before I was redirected to get one of three subscriptions. About the color accuracy. It is really pretty good. Not perfect. I think on some of them that the saturation levels are too high. Which is a big complaint of mine about most colorizations efforts.
Thanks Roberta for the excellent and very informative post about this!
Although the tech has been available online for some years, I think the MH one shows considerable improvement in object recognition. I personally love colourised photos, you can pick out details you would ordinarily miss. What we really need now is photo repair.
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