MyHeritage offers two AI tools for old photos: Deep Nostalgia, which adds short animated movement to a still portrait, and Photo Colorizer, which adds realistic color to black-and-white photos. Both are free to try with a few photos per month; more require a paid plan.
A black-and-white photo of your grandparents. A formal portrait from the 1940s where nobody is smiling. These photos carry real history, but they can feel distant. MyHeritage has two AI features that change that: one adds color to black-and-white photos, and the other makes still portraits briefly come to life.
This article covers both — how they work, what to expect, and how to use them step by step. For repairing actual physical damage (tears, water stains, fading), that's a different process covered in the photo restoration guide.
What MyHeritage Actually Does
Photo Colorizer analyzes the tones and textures in a black-and-white photo and adds realistic color. It makes educated guesses about skin tones, clothing colors, and backgrounds based on what it's seen in millions of other historical photos.
Deep Nostalgia goes further: it applies short animated movement to a still portrait — a slight head turn, a blink, a subtle smile. The effect comes from a library of real human motion clips that are mapped onto the face in your photo.
Neither tool changes the underlying photo. You download the animated video or colorized image separately.
Create a free MyHeritage account
Go to myheritage.com and click Sign up. You'll need an email address. The free account gives you access to both the Photo Colorizer and Deep Nostalgia features, with a limited number of free uses.
You don't need to build a family tree or enter any genealogy information to use the photo tools. When signing up, you can skip the family tree setup and go directly to the AI tools.
Find a good photo to start with
These tools work best with:
- A clearly visible face (at least medium close-up — not a tiny figure in a wide landscape photo)
- Reasonable image quality — sharp enough to make out facial features
- For colorization: a true black-and-white or sepia photo (not a color photo you converted)
- For animation: a single person or a clear main subject
Older photos are often only available as prints. If you're working from a physical photo, scan it at a high resolution — 600 DPI or higher is ideal. A photo scanning app on your phone (like Microsoft Lens or Google PhotoScan) can work if you don't have a scanner.
Colorize a black-and-white photo
From your MyHeritage account, click Enhance photos in the top menu, then choose Photo Colorizer.
Upload your black-and-white photo. The AI processes it in about 10–30 seconds. You'll see a before/after slider so you can compare.
The colorization is automatic — you don't choose colors manually. The AI makes its best guess based on context. Skin tones and nature tend to come out well. Clothing colors are a guess — your great-grandmother's dress might have been blue or green, and the AI picks one. Think of it as plausible, not certain.
Download the colorized version if you're happy with it.
Animate a portrait with Deep Nostalgia
From the Enhance photos menu, choose Deep Nostalgia.
Upload your photo. You'll be shown a short preview of the animation before it's finalized. The animation is a few seconds long and loops.
A few things to know:
- You can choose from a small selection of animation styles (different motion clips)
- The animation works best on a face that's looking roughly toward the camera
- Severely damaged or very low-resolution photos may produce uneven results
When you're happy, click Download to save the animated video (usually in .mp4 format).
Share or save your results
Colorized photos save as standard .jpg or .png files — you can print them, share them, or use them in a digital photo book.
Animated videos save as short .mp4 clips. They share easily on Facebook, WhatsApp, or in a group text. Most social media platforms accept them as video uploads.
MyHeritage also lets you save results to your account so you can access them again later, which is useful if you're working through a whole collection of family photos.
What to Realistically Expect
The colorization and animation are impressive for what they are, but they're educated guesses. The color of a garment, the exact shade of someone's eyes — these details aren't in the original photo, so the AI fills them in plausibly rather than accurately.
For most families, that's fine. For archivists or historians, it's worth noting that a colorized photo is an interpretation, not a record.
What to try next
If your family photos need repair before colorizing — faded, torn, or water-damaged prints — the AI photo restoration guide covers the best tools for that step. And if you want to turn still photos into full short videos, not just brief animations, see how to make AI videos from photos.
