Skip to main content

Colorize and Enhance B&W Photos for Free Before Sept. 10th, 2020

 SEPTEMBER 05, 2020

Head on over to MyHeritage.com THIS WEEK to upload your black and white photos for FREE (you’ll need to set up a free registered account with the site first). The system will instantly enhance the image and utilize cutting-edge software to give color to your photo! Check out some of my personal examples below.

BEFORE

Photo of Dixon Family on wagon, 1904, West Virginia, black and white original in personal possession of Kira D. Foltz.

Photo of Dixon Family on wagon, 1904, West Virginia, black and white original in personal possession of Kira D. Foltz.

AFTER

Photo of Dixon Family on wagon, 1904, West Virginia, black and white original in personal possession of Kira D. Foltz; digital colorized image, MyHeritage (MyHeritage.com : accessed 5 Sep 2020).

Photo of Dixon Family on wagon, 1904, West Virginia, black and white original in personal possession of Kira D. Foltz; digital colorized image, MyHeritage (MyHeritage.com : accessed 5 Sep 2020).

Here’s what the colorizer looks like in action!

Screenshot of MyHeritage Photo Enhancer Tool, 5 Sep 2020, MyHeritage (MyHeritage.com : accessed 5 Sep 2020); photo of John C. Eggenberger in his confectionary and grocery store, 1905, Boone, Iowa, black and white original courtesy of Sandra (Foltz) …

Screenshot of MyHeritage Photo Enhancer Tool, 5 Sep 2020, MyHeritage (MyHeritage.com : accessed 5 Sep 2020); photo of John C. Eggenberger in his confectionary and grocery store, 1905, Boone, Iowa, black and white original courtesy of Sandra (Foltz) Vallo in personal possession of Kira D. Foltz; digital colorized image, MyHeritage (MyHeritage.com : accessed 5 Sep 2020).

I am very curious how well the tool manages different complexions, shading, and low-light situations, so please hit me up with your results! I’d love to see them.

The site allows you to re-download your original image, download their enhanced and colorized image (with watermark at the bottom), as well as giving you an option to save a combined comparison image (such as the one below, featuring my 2nd great grandmother).

I have noticed that while you can submit tintypes (or daguerrotypes or similar), the software’s colorization does not turn out as realistic I’d say. It more so looks closer to a water-colored image of a black & white photo.

Photo of Ester (Sauvain) Eggenberger Ziegler, Aug 1927, West Dolan, Cass, Missouri, black and white original in personal possession of Kira D. Foltz; digital colorized image, MyHeritage (MyHeritage.com : accessed 5 Sep 2020).

Photo of Ester (Sauvain) Eggenberger Ziegler, Aug 1927, West Dolan, Cass, Missouri, black and white original in personal possession of Kira D. Foltz; digital colorized image, MyHeritage (MyHeritage.com : accessed 5 Sep 2020).

Photo of Phoebe Ann Yoders, undated, likely West Virginia, black and white original in personal possession of Kira D. Foltz; digital colorized image, MyHeritage (MyHeritage.com : accessed 5 Sep 2020).

Photo of Phoebe Ann Yoders, undated, likely West Virginia, black and white original in personal possession of Kira D. Foltz; digital colorized image, MyHeritage (MyHeritage.com : accessed 5 Sep 2020).

Photo of Chester Joseph Dean, undated, likely West Virginia, black and white original in personal possession of Kira D. Foltz; digital colorized image, MyHeritage (MyHeritage.com : accessed 5 Sep 2020).

Photo of Chester Joseph Dean, undated, likely West Virginia, black and white original in personal possession of Kira D. Foltz; digital colorized image, MyHeritage (MyHeritage.com : accessed 5 Sep 2020).

Beware! It is a QUICK ADDICTION!

Photo of George LeeRoy Foltz and freighting associate possibly George Harrison, 1912, Oregon, black and white original in personal possession of Kira D. Foltz; digital colorized image, MyHeritage (MyHeritage.com : accessed 5 Sep 2020).

Photo of George LeeRoy Foltz and freighting associate possibly George Harrison, 1912, Oregon, black and white original in personal possession of Kira D. Foltz; digital colorized image, MyHeritage (MyHeritage.com : accessed 5 Sep 2020).

ANYONE can do this! I mean, anyone! It’s SO easy to use and SO quick to generate!

It’s just so much fun.

And, yes, the following photo is of my great aunt Vivian as a toddler with a LIVE BEAR! Chained up….but, um, still….

Photo of Vivian Margaret Foltz, ca. 1920, Walla Walla, Washington, black and white original courtesy of Bob Silva in personal possession of Kira D. Foltz; digital colorized image, MyHeritage (MyHeritage.com : accessed 5 Sep 2020).

Photo of Vivian Margaret Foltz, ca. 1920, Walla Walla, Washington, black and white original courtesy of Bob Silva in personal possession of Kira D. Foltz; digital colorized image, MyHeritage (MyHeritage.com : accessed 5 Sep 2020).

Photo of Dean Family Reunion, 14 Aug 1949, Wheeling Park, West Virginia, black and white original in personal possession of Kira D. Foltz; digital colorized image, MyHeritage (MyHeritage.com : accessed 5 Sep 2020).

Photo of Dean Family Reunion, 14 Aug 1949, Wheeling Park, West Virginia, black and white original in personal possession of Kira D. Foltz; digital colorized image, MyHeritage (MyHeritage.com : accessed 5 Sep 2020).

As you can tell, it also helps bring to light small details in the photograph that you may not have noticed otherwise.

What a great way to forensically analyze photographs!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2025 52 Ancestors: At the Library - First Outing to FamilySearch in Salt Lake City

Every genealogist should eventually make the trek out to SLC to visit the FamilySearch Library (formerly known as the Family History Library). It is open access and free to the public, like a city library, except it is wholly focused on genealogy research materials and managed by the company FamilySearch (founded by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). Kira D. Foltz, photo of entrance to FamilySearch Library, Salt Lake City, UT, Mar 2025. One of the genealogy societies I belong to, Ventura County Genealogical Society ( VCGS ), makes an annual pilgrimage to the library on what they have termed the Salt Lake City Safari. I learned about their trip a couple years ago and felt I'd need to tag along when the schedule made sense for me. 2025 was the year! James McAleney, photo of VCGS Safari group at FamilySearch Library, Salt Lake City, UT, Mar 2025. Used with permission. A group of about 35 of us joined together in Utah for a week in March filled with family history resea...
2 comments
Read more

Patient Zero AKA The First Post

  All diseases start somewhere, and the genealogy bug is no exception. I’m Kira Dawn Foltz, and you can think of me as Patient Zero. I’m here to help spread this disorder to the masses (or at least through the branches of my own tree)! And what better way to start the infection, than a history in how I caught the illness. My origin story. The year was 1993. I was 8 years old and in the 4th grade at Calvary Baptist School in Gardena, California, where my father had also attended elementary school (later Calvary Christian Academy, and now home to CrossRoad SouthBay). Mrs. Henken was my teacher. She was also my piano tutor’s wife and a very sweet lady to boot. If only she could have spotted the symptoms back then, who knows in what condition I’d be today! Mrs. Henken assigned us an oral presentation about one of our ancestors. My dad helped me reach out to my Aunt Sandra, the family historian, for information on where we came from. I received a letter from her with a fabulous tale of ...
4 comments
Read more

RootsTech Revelations!

Unfortunately I still have not yet had the chance to attend a RootsTech genealogy conference in person, however, 2025 marks the fourth year in a row I've watched virtually since their quick and nimble transition during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. I'm quite thankful for the plethora of videos and keynote presentations FamilySearch has offered online since that point in history, and for FREE, nonetheless! In the handful of presentations I've managed to view or listen to so far this year, there was one put on by Claire Bradley , a Dublin-based genetic genealogist, that helped me strike gold in my research! Her talk was called Irish Genealogy Resources at the Virtual Treasury . It explored the holdings of the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland which has had the goal of recreating an online database of documents lost during the Four Courts Fire of 1922 at the Public Record Office of Ireland.  Obviously, due to the devastating destruction at that archive, many original recor...
Post a Comment
Read more