You’ll need to sign-up for a free account if you want to use the tools, but it’s well worth doing this if you’re interested in genealogy. We rate it as both one of the best genealogy sites (opens in new tab) out there, and one of the best family tree makers (opens in new tab), too. Once you’ve signed up, you can access these tools by visiting the site, clicking over to the ‘photos’ tab and uploading your images. Here, we break down how it works.
MyHeritage: Animate pics
Perhaps the best-known tool on the MyHeritage site is its ‘Deep Nostalgia (opens in new tab)’ AI feature. This allows you to upload an old image, then watch as it’s brought to life, through a series of subtle movements (usually blinking, then turning slightly to one side and smiling.) It’s not always perfect, as sometimes images become distorted and blur at the edges. However, it’s a fun way to revisit past images and maybe get kids interested in looking at pics of their ancestors. You can upload photos of individuals, or upload group pictures and the AI will pick out individual faces for you to animate. It works by identifying the facial features of an image, then animating it according to a set of ‘drivers’. These drivers are actually pre-recorded videos that consist of a fixed sequence of movements and gestures, so the animation is mimicking these videos in effect. The photo tool will automatically assign a set of drivers to your image, but you can hand pick which ones you’d like to apply as well, to make your subject pull different faces.
MyHeritage: Enhance your photos
This lesser known enhancer (opens in new tab) tool is probably much more useful if you have a stack of old photos that you’re looking to edit. In a nutshell, this feature allows you to upload pics and sharpen them, which is handy for older, faded images. It works by upscaling images, increasing their resolution so they appear sharper. Like the Deep Nostalgia tool, you can upload group photos and flick through each face, sharpening them individually. However, there aren’t any options to tweak photos beyond the initial ‘upscaling’ that’s done by the machine learning tool; you don’t have the same level of control as you would with the best photo editing software (opens in new tab). This might cause occasional issues, where glitches could occur (or faces are inaccurately sharpened so that they’re unrecognizable.) Overall, though, it’s an impressive – and very fast – tool that you can use for free.
MyHeritage: Colorize images
This is another tool that MyHeritage has made incredibly simple to use. Members just need to navigate to the ‘photos’ tab, upload a black and white image, then watch as the AI magically turns it into a fully-colorized picture. This colorizer tool (opens in new tab) can also be used to restore colors on faded images, where they’ve not been properly preserved. Like the other tools, this features deploys clever machine learning to alter the image. According to MyHeritage, the colorization model was trained by being exposed to millions of real photos, which led to it developing an ‘understanding of our world and its colors’. Got a heap of old black and white photos you need to scan before you can use the software? We recommend using either one of the best slide to digital image converters (opens in new tab) for the job, or – if you’d rather leave it the professionals – use one of the best photo scanning services (opens in new tab) instead.
