Last week I attended the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy and one of the lunch time sessions was with MyHeritage’s Daniel Horowitz. Daniel introduced MyHeritage’s new color restoration tool so I had to give it a go.
So what is Color Restoration?
From MyHeritage: Unlike colorization, which simulates colors of black and white photos, the new color restoration feature is ideal for restoring scanned photos from the 1950s to the 1990s that were originally taken in color, but have faded over the years. This gives you the chance to revive your favorite moments from the days before digital photography. With color restoration, you get the authentic colors revived in seconds, and no colors are guessed in the process. As a bonus, color restoration also sharpens photos and improves their level of detail. When color restoration is applied, the original photo is left intact and a separate copy is created with the restored colors. Over time, old color photos tend to fade. Bright and vibrant hues from decades past turn different shades. UV light can affect the chemical makeup of printed photos, causing them to turn sickly yellow and lose their colors. With color restoration on MyHeritage, even the most worn out color photos can come back to life, with exceptional results.
I love the tools that MyHeritage is giving users who want to work with their photos but I love even more that when you chose to use these tools, your original photo is left intact. This is so important to me because while I love to see how the photos turn out using a tool like color restoration, I also want to be able to preserve my original photo without any editing.
Here are a couple of photos I chose to use the color restoration tool on:
This one was taken about 1965 and the original had a reddish tint to everything. I love how the color restoration tool used the available colors in the original photo, removed the red tint, and really brought into focus the three people in the photo.
For my second example I chose to see what MyHeritage could do with a really faded photo. The photo was originally black and white so not the best for using the color restoration tool but I wanted to see what it would come up with. While the photo is still not great, I do feel like the the color restored and enhanced photo provides a little more clarity and sharpness to the faces of the people, distinguishing them from the background.
It’s certainly worth giving MyHeritage’s new color restoration tool a go!
The color restoration tool can be found on MyHeritage by hovering your mouse over Family Tree on the top menu, then choosing Colorize Photos from the drop down menu.
And if you want to learn more, below is a video from MyHeritage with info on this fun new tool.
KindredPast 