MyHeritage Colorization of Photos

The genealogy-world is aflutter over MyHeritage’s free photo colorization feature on their website (https://www.myheritage.com/incolor). Color me not really impressed.

Personally I’ve never been one to see the value in the colorization of photographs that were originally black and white. The determination of the actual colors appears to be somewhat based upon guesswork and I struggle to see how the colors bring anyone “back to life.”

I did colorize a few photographs as an experiment, but personally thought that the resulting images were not quite as sharp as the original and in some cases the faces really seemed to be glowing at me.

The picture of my brother and I with a cow and calf from the late 1970s really resulted in a disappointing colorized image. The color of the hats appears to be more blue than the “Pioneer seed corn green” that I know those hats were.

I’d rather spend my time digitizing the images I have and researching those gaps in ancestral lives that need to be filled.

That’s the real way to “bring them back to life.” Colorizing an old black and white photograph isn’t going to do that. Researching and locating more documents will.

Michael and David Neill, Carthage, Hancock County, Illinois, 1979.
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4 thoughts on “MyHeritage Colorization of Photos

  1. Thomas Vilfroy says:

    Also per reports, if you do use this colorization program of MyHeritage, the terms say that MyHeritage will own these pictures. So use at your own peril!!

  2. I haven’t been able to find any other information about MyHeritage owning the pictures. Could you let me know where I might find those terms? Thank you!

    • I am looking. I assumed (which I should not have) that there were terms of use regarding this feature. We’ll let you know what we find out.

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