A Picture’s Worth: 5 Ways to Bring New Life to Your Old Photographs
Old family photographs can bring back memories or even connect us to relatives we never knew. However, these flat, sometimes faded and torn mementos can seem lifeless and dead. Fortunately, both old and new technology can breathe new life into your old photos. Some methods will require a professional while others you can do yourself.
Colorize Black-and-White Photographs
Colorizing has been around for a long time. For decades, photos were colorized by hand, but today, you can use colorizing software. You can colorize digitized black and white photos yourself with AI colorizing software. There are quite a few websites and apps where you can upload your digitized photos for colorization. However, if you want to colorize a physical photo, that’s a job best left to a professional.
Animate Old Photos
There is a unique service online that uses AI technology to literally bring old photos back to life. The software uses driver videos of facial expressions, applying them to the uploaded photo. In a few seconds, you can see your relatives smile, blink, and nod their heads in a very realistic way. Relatives you never knew instantly become relatable. You may even recognize expressions from your family members or from yourself.
You can see hundreds of videos on YouTube using this technology to bring historical figures back to life. When combined with colorization, the effect is extremely realistic.
Metal Printing
You’ll need to bring your old color photos into a professional that does metal printing, but the results are fabulous. Metal prints are made by imprinting dyes right into a specially coated aluminum sheet. The result is stunningly luminescent with colors that glow. The surface can be finished in several ways, from glossy to matte. Also, metal printing can be done on a curved surface and framed any way you like.
AI Photo Reconstruction
Very old photos that have become damaged and degraded can also benefit from AI technology. Photo reconstruction software can remove things like dust specks from digitized photos, and it can also do a facial reconstruction. So, if you have an old photo with cracks or tears across the face, this type of software can repair the digitized version.
Photo Enhancers
Photo enhancers can take an out-of-focus photograph and sharpen it into focus. All of the blurry photos that you have can once again be transformed into vivid memories. Once brought into focus, photos that were once forgotten in a shoebox are ready to be framed and shown off.
As long as you can digitize your old photos, bringing them back to life is easy. Often, the results are jaw-dropping.