Born on St Patrick's Day: Happy 115th Mary

They say that its good luck to be Irish, and that the luckiest of all are those who are born on St Patrick's Day. No doubt this is what was said the day that my great grandmother was born. However, her life was not necessarily filled with the good luck that the superstition had predicted. As much as she had a hard life, her life was also an "ordinary" one of a young British immigrant to Canada. Despite that, the simple life she led in youth was filled with fun. She embrace the changing times, new found freedoms, and innovations. Its the heirlooms from that chapter of her life that fascinate me the most because they show aside to her that none of my relatives knew - a woman who was happy. So today, I am going to share the side of her that one of those heirlooms tells. I have a small black autograph book that was hers.  At almost 100 years old, the book binding has all but disintegrated yet the leather cover is in near pristine condition and the partially bound pages are al...
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MyHeritage In Colour: How to Bring Vintage Photos to Life

Old family photos are one of the most personal types of records. They tell us what someone looked like, how they dressed, and give us a valuable insight into their personality and everyday life. The main challenge is that many old photos were developed in greyscale (black and white). By adding colour we can bring the picture to life. 

Currently MyHeritage offers four photo editing tools. 

1. In Colour

2. Photo Enhancer

3. Repair

4. Animate

For the scope of this post I'm only going to be discussing the first three. 

In Colour:

The tool itself is quite easy to use, all you need is an account (no membership required) and a picture that has been saved as a .jpg file. Once uploaded you will see half your picture in colour and the other half in the original greyscale. By dragging the slide bar left, you can reveal the full colour image. 


There are a few limitations of the tool. More specifically, small patches of colour may be missed, or deep colours such as black may take on a purple/red hue. In my experience, its most common that hands and occasionally legs will not get missed. It's also important to note that sepia tone pictures cant be effectively colourized. In these cases, it works best to covert the image to black and white prior to uploading. 

There are two main options for saving the result. 

1. save just the colourized version

2. save a comparison  

Enhance:

The enhancement tool is used to sharpen the image. It proves most effective on ones that are slightly lower quality. In the below example, the sharpness is most noticeable in the finer details such as hair and background objects (ie. the sign). The enhancer also will provide a close up view of a few faces. Some of these are quite distorted, while others are so crisp that they look like a portrait. For example in the below image, I was able to view closeups of the two women on the left. The left most woman came out incredibly clear. I was able to see every last detail right down to the blue eye shadow. The second woman's face came out all kinds of distorted. The most likely cause of this is that her hair is blowing in the wind. 


Repair:

Often times the most loved photos are the ones that are the most damaged (think of that picture that Grandpa carried in his wallet for the past 50 years). Bent corners, crease lines, discolouration, and minor tears can all be repaired using this feature. In the example below, the original has multiple creases at three of the four corners. In the repaired version, the creases are more or less gone. 


Saving:

Once your satisfied with how the picture looks, you can save it using any of the following options. 

1. save just the colourized version

2. save a comparison  


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