As the keeper of the family memories, I have hundreds of photos. The tool is quick and easy to use and I must say the transformation from black and white to "living colour" is impactful. It hits you right in the feels.
MyHeritage allows you to play with the program for free. On about 10-12 photos. Then you are taken to a payment page to subscribe. The subscription that allows unlimited colorization is the Premium Plus Complete Plan which was $269 cad.
You can upload photos one at a time while in the MyHeritage in Color tool or you can upload several at a time to your photo album and then colourize them from there. The original B&W is retained. You can share your "new" photos on social media, copy a link to email the album or download individually to your computer. I found that on the first night, I was also limited in the number I could download and that was quite frustrating. The only way I could get them to my computer was to view the full image and "save as". The problem with that was they were all in JFIF format. None were shareable. I had to then download an extension to Chrome, email them to myself and then they were all automatically converted to JPEG upon download. Very cumbersome. However, that may have been a result of overuse of the site because today, there was no problem saving the photos directly from the colourization tool. And all in JPEG.
The tool still needs some tweaking. It doesn't work well with blue and red, often giving a grey or mottled colour pattern, as seen on my dad's shirt. I can guarantee my dad never owned a camouflage shirt!
Similarly, it appears colour blind between green and red, in one case turning a green and white striped shirt to red and white. And it doesn't recognize environmental factors such as shade/shadowing, as is seen here in my grandpa's seemingly diseased arm which is in fact in the shade.
That said, these glitches are not enough for me not to recommend the tool. It is fun, addictive and very much a game changer when it comes to preserving family memories. As my cousin said, "it makes the photos look like they were just taken yesterday" and in so many ways brings the people and the places in the photos back to living memory.
Photos evoke memories long suppressed. Seeing the black and white photos come to life with the colourization tool deepens and strengthens those memories and all of the warm feelings of love, belonging and connection that the memories hold. Without a doubt, the MyHeritage in Color tool is the new big thing in genealogy and family history. Well done to the MyHeritage team.
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