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This Online Photo Enhancer Helps People See Their Ancestors Clearly And Here Are 30 Of The Best Restorations
MyHeritage is an online genealogy platform that helps people to connect with their family histories. Earlier this year, they introduced MyHeritage In Color™, a new technology supposed to bring old family photos to life through colorization. But On June 12, the company took it a step further, introducing a tool that enhances photos by bringing blurry faces into sharp focus.
"When combined, MyHeritage In Color™ and the MyHeritage Photo Enhancer can reveal your ancestors as you've never seen them before," the company wrote on its blog. "The technology for enhancing photos was licensed by MyHeritage from the creators of the Remini mobile application. They developed machine learning technology to enhance photos by upscaling (increasing the resolution) the faces that appear in them. This produces exceptional results for historical photos, where the faces are often small and blurry, but works equally well on new color photos too. Enhancement works best on photos that feature multiple people, and allows you to go face by face to see each one enhanced."
MyHeritage really believes that it's the best technology in the world for this kind of work. "No other company has succeeded in developing photo enhancement technology of this quality. The results are crisp and truly outstanding."
Continue scrolling, check out what the enhancer is capable of and tell us in the comments whether you agree with this ballsy statement!
More info: myheritage.com
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Cold Contagious 5 years ago
Bored Panda can you please get rid of Rozzi and the other disgusting smut talking girls with sex site redirects?
Cold Contagious 5 years ago
Clarifying the photo actually seems to show more gentleness to her eyes than the blurry one. She is very beautiful , without makeup, and filter free. I find it sad that she has no smile. So many reasons ppl will never know.
John Briick 5 years ago
I gave it a try and was astounded! The original was B&W and rather grainy... ALL-THE-KI...40f619.jpg 
RELATED:
#2
Shushadei 5 years ago
I tried that with an old picture of my parent's engagement. Sharp? Yes! My parents faces? No, not at all! No similarity!
Marcellus the Third 5 years ago
Indeed, this programme copies&pastes from "similar" faces in its database... It's not "sharpening", it's "enhancing" by adding information completely not there on the "before".
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Kika González 5 years ago
I don't understand what you're saying? Sharper image but not who was in the original picture? How can it sharpen an image but not be the same person(s)?? So this AFTER still looks like the person BEFORE
#3
#4
#5
Tolga ÜSTÜN 5 years ago
There is allways a crazy uncle who lies on the grass in a sirious photo. Gotta love it :)
Marcellus the Third 5 years ago
Yes, especially the left man whose trousers obviously never were grey, now grey!
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Cathy Carey 5 years ago
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate what they've done here; but, I prefer the old pictures of a lot of these. The old picture isn't any more blurry than the colored one and that's what I thought this article was about taking photos that are so blurry we can't see what the people really look like and fixing them.
#6
#7
mermaidgirl960 5 years ago
Looks kind of like the little girl in #4 I wonder if they are the same person with those beautiful eyes
#8
#9
Tolga ÜSTÜN 5 years ago
Imagine that you are posing to a photographer and be like "this ones gonna be famous one day in hundred years"
Data1001 5 years ago
Looks like the lips didn't come out quite right. In the pic on the left, his are more pursed.
Mme de Poppadom 5 years ago
He likely didn't have teeth, so the lips sunk inward.
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#10
Mme de Poppadom 5 years ago
2 quick reasons: longer exposure time, and smiling is not considered appropriate for a formal portrait.
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#12
#13
#15
Brittania Kelli 5 years ago
I see glasses in both pictures. They are very faint but glasses back then tended to not have any frame with simple wife across nose and the wire for ears, so they wouldn't show easily. I can make out the nose wire on the retouched photo, also on retouched photo on the left cheek you can see a reflective light square from the flashes reflection against the glass. if you find that square of light you can start to make out the glasses.
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Mark Hamilton 5 years ago
Ya know they did that back then, Pose your dead auntie so you could get that one last family Picture, Especailly babies and young children.
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#17
#18
#19
#20
mermaidgirl960 5 years ago
She looks like you would meet her at the horse races with a group of other girls!
Load More Replies... Dorothy Cloud 5 years ago
I think he takes a little "literary license", but not too much. Very pretty.
#21
#22
Dave In MD 5 years ago
The chevron below the crossed cannons on his rating badge should be red.
#23
deanna woods 5 years ago
I am glad that I am not the only person who saw the photo from The Shining.
#24
Loki’s Lil Butter Knife 5 years ago (edited)
I would love to know what Algorithms MyHeritage uses to colourise and enhance these old photographs. The little boy in the center of the photograph looks like his left leg and right hand have been mistakenly coloured grey.
PandaJon 5 years ago
Maybe he's actually grey and the "fleshtones" are the incorrect part ... >>Mind blown<<.
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Karl Peisker 5 years ago
I colorised this picture from my family from 1952 already in 2003 with PS5 and used almoust 100 layers to create shirts with 4 or more colours hochzeit_b...c34bda.jpg 
Grumble O'Pug 5 years ago
yeah....nope. Too orange, green is too weak, and why is everyone wearing blue?
#25
Mary Delaney 5 years ago
i love this , but whoever did this should have either finished putting the glasses on him or left them out all together
Brittania Kelli 5 years ago
Another instance of phantom glasses, it's like he's wearing glasses that were cut in half.
SirPatTheCat 5 years ago
Whaat I would not have caught the glasses but you can totally see them on the original photo once you know they're there!!
#26
#27
Cori 5 years ago
She looks determined. The set of her mouth says 'try me. I've already seen some s**t and you don't impress me a bit.' The writer in me sees a character I very much want to build a story around!
Steven Essex 5 years ago
I'm almost put in mind of young Rose from Titanic.
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#28
Kathy Baylis 5 years ago (edited)
It’s just the angle. Look right behind the hoof of the back leg. You can just see a tiny corner of the other hoof. The horse’s legs being the same color as the car behind them makes it hard to make out the rest of the fourth leg.
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Cori 5 years ago
The rider's foot position is making me crazy. If that horse unseats him (totally plausible based on his ears and tense body language) his foot could get caught in that stirrup. Correct position is to balance on the ball of the foot. There are 2 reasons for this. First it keeps the rider balanced. Second, it greatly reduces the chances of being dragged. Far better to land in a heap in the dirt than to go flying across a field with your head bouncing off the ground. I actually preferred to ride without a saddle at all (when I was younger). It forced me to have good posture and if/when I fell, there wasn't all that tack to get caught up in. I basically fell daily when I was first learning so falling safely became a wierd skill for me.
Mme de Poppadom 5 years ago
Concern trolling is fine in the 21st century, but back then, the more unsafe, the braver the man. Stuff like helmets in american football, safety harnesses for workers on skyscrapers, and secret ballots were vigorously protested, much like the COVID mask of our present time.
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Bartosz Szamborski 5 years ago
Everything is changing. Here we see different holding of reins (in four not three fingers), feets are much deeper in stirrups than today. For first i just thought that is just in this picture, but then i serched in google "early 1900s horse riding". And ok... maybe feets, on some pictures are that deep (especialy polo players i dont know why), or maybe just this guy was not a good rider, but on every photo from thoose times, reins are holded in this way. And the rump of this horse... not much muscle...
Jennifer Sacrison 5 years ago
Three legged no tail horses are very rare and we're lucky to catch this one on film!!! 😂😂
Grumble O'Pug 5 years ago
That is a gorgeous Heavy Hunter. FYI common to ride w/o a saddlepad and often saddles had a woolen panel (where it meets the horse's back)
Bartosz Szamborski 5 years ago
They also cut him tail and mane, and poor horse can't fight with flies. So maybe they just don't bother such a thing as saddle pad.
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Dianna Siever 5 years ago
It's from a graduation. Maybe taken from too far a distance?
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#34
cassiushumanmother 5 years ago
I love him! He was amazing. Sure really handsome until the end but much more, good-hearted and very clever. A good actor and a good man.( I would have been a Newman groupie if i was older^^)
#35
Kathy Baylis 5 years ago
See kids? We’ve been trying to tell you we’ve been there, done that. With nothing more than a few tech upgrades, you’re merely doing the same stuff your parents did—-and their parents, and their parents’ parents, and so on going way back. That’s how we know when and how you’re doing it, or planning to. I ain’t ESP or some kind of magic. It’s experience. You’ll have it too, in a few years.
#36
#37
Koalamonster 5 years ago
This one creeps me out a lil bit. Almost looks like he has no mouth... weirds me out.
#45
Elizabeth Gill 5 years ago
Had to be to become what she wanted to be and to accomplish what she did.
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Exadoor Rising123 5 years ago
There have been many theories as to what happened to her. One being she crash landed on or near an Island and was captured by the Japanese as they thought her to be a spy for the USA... human bones were apparently found on said Island but then there was a photo of a woman sitting on a wharf and it really looked like her, again, in a country that was not USA. Sorry, I have forgotten where. Perhaps we will never know what became of her. So sad for her family and friends who were to go through their own lives never knowing what became of Amelia. I hope they are all resting in peace now.
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#48
#53
cassiushumanmother 5 years ago
I thought it was Himmler and i was like "what?!" so i googled it it's not him. He really look like that monster, poor man.
#56
michelle neugebauer 5 years ago
That's interesting! I didn't know much about him and now have my curiosity peaked.
#58
#59
Not Proud British 5 years ago
You can see the plug board behind them so much better now! (just kidding!)
Elisabeth Moriarty 5 years ago
Lol I was just going to say that I was looking for the rock with the C on it lol
#60
#61
Jim Price 5 years ago
As is his left hand, which is not a glove as that hand is clearly holding a pair of tan gloves.
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#64
Thumbs Down 5 years ago
Strange how this AFTER shot is still overexposed ("washed out"). I'd like to think that a user could tailor such settings, if need. But overall, very impressive software.
#67
#71
John Otruba 5 years ago
7 kids in my family..one always rode on rear window deck..it was a fought for spot!
Kathy Baylis 5 years ago (edited)
Remember laying down in the rear window, on that shelf behind the backseat? Hanging out the open back window of the station wagon? Curling up on the floor? Sitting on the armrest hump in the backseat, or in the middle of the front (bench) seat between your mom and dad? And not one seat belt being used. I had four older brothers (much older—-between 9 and 18 years older), so I always ended up on the hump in the backseat. When the boys started teasing me too much, my parents would let me climb over the front seat—-while the car was moving!—-and sit in between them. I considered that to be sweet revenge, because me sitting there meant the front armrest had to be put up, blocking the heat or A/C from going to the backseat where my brothers were. Bwahahaha!!!
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Mandy Delaforce (PC Girl) 5 years ago
Oh, and for some of us, it WAS in recent years. #feelingold
Thumbs Down 5 years ago
My heart goes out to those families who involuntarily spurred the change which lead to current safety precautions. :(
#74
#75
Thumbs Down 5 years ago
Firstly... Great! We now can finally see some legit limitations this system has. So far (from what I myself have noticed), this might only be the 2nd one in this blog which fails. (the other one doesn't fail quite as hard as this one does). hmm... I wonder if the AI could "have another go at it" ?? Sounds theoretically sound, right? (since it pulls info from many sources to generate these images).
#76
#77
Connie George 5 years ago
Why is there a weird quadrant over her face in both photos? It's as if her face was pasted over that of another woman in the original shot.
#79
Thumbs Down 5 years ago
I should think it COULD, right? Still impressive, but I'd like to see a 2nd artificial opinion, before we have to settle on the fact that this in fact is EXACTLY how this person looked.
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Elisabeth Moriarty 5 years ago
I hope this is not one of those deceased photos they used to take at the turn of the 1900s
#81
Thumbs Down 5 years ago
I wish they'd leave these irrelevant ones OUT of this listing. The post itself says that it has been Colorized and Enhanced ONLY. Any student could do the same with Photoshop. this one, and many others on this list, have not actually been GENERATED by AI.
#84
Marek Yanchurak 5 years ago
No it didn't. The photo enhancer is doing nothing more than making an educatated guess.
Aria Whitaker 5 years ago
It is a pretty good estimation seeing as though their Strabismus gene most likely did not come out of thin air but was inherited....had to be from someone.
Load More Replies... Connie George 5 years ago
Agree. In the photo, the right half of his face is still to blurry to tell.
#85
Thumbs Down 5 years ago
almost. The eyes are too large, but still so damn impressive how it can do this. (assuming this entire blog isn't some kinda hoax...)
#86
Connie George 5 years ago
Barely any difference because the original was already pretty clear. Why bother enhancing this one?
#87
#88
Thumbs Down 5 years ago (edited)
and go DIRECTLY to The Mens' Warehouse. That silver-haired dude GUARANTEES "you're gonna love the way you look". (or do they spell it as WEARhouse? they should've, if they don't already...)
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Thumbs Down 5 years ago (edited)
the problem here... is that the subject was BLINKING his eyes at the moment of capture. Those are (squinted) eyelids, I believe. Yep, now that I think about it, that makes sense that the AI was NOT fed enough pix of accidental blinking... Deliberately so, probably because such pix are (thought to be) "incorrect" and therefore weren't included in its education. they'll need to work those samples of shut-eyes in as well.
Add New Image
What do you think ?
Marek Yanchurak 5 years ago
Zoom in and enhance, Enhance. Enhance! Look this is just guesswork on the AI's part. They've seen/processed enough hi res photos of people to be able to competently fill in the details, but they're still doing just that - filling in the details. They are not pulling that information out of the photographs themselves. It's interesting, but lets not assume it's something that it's not.
N G 5 years ago
That's exactly what i was thinking, thanks for typing it in to legible English
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Dror Caspi 5 years ago
I uploaded a blurry photo of my family. Definitely not us after reconstruction. Yes, you get clear photos but of random people.
RaroaRaroa 5 years ago
I thought that would be a good way to test it. Upload bad quality photos of people you actually know. Thanks for saving me from wasting my time. :-)
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Hans 5 years ago
This sounds like an advert for this service. Sure, the results look impressive and seem to make history more tangible. However, what you see on the enhanced photo is not how the person(s) looked like but how an AI algorithm predicts they might have looked like. This makes a huge difference!
Fixin'Ta 5 years ago
Looks to me like it's super close. Our minds can extrapolate what the images probably looked like for real, and that's what the AI is doing in "print" form. I'd rather have a close approximation to what my g-g-grandparents looked like than be stuck with a blurry image that doesn't get any closer than the AI approximation.
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John Forman 5 years ago
Have they tried using it on those blurry photos of Bigfoot? That I would like to see!
iblowsheep 5 years ago
I would bet that for every one of these "impressive enhancements" there are dozens of failures.
WilvanderHeijden 5 years ago
Ads are getting smarter and you pay for your enhanced photos with your privacy and data and even money when you decide to subscribe to My Heritage.
Tor Rolf Strøm 5 years ago
See!? This is what I was saying! A week or so ago, I commented on a post about movie myths, and one was about "enhance" in movies, where they enhance a blurry or pixilated photo. Just a few years ago that was impossible, but now? Its god damn reality! It's just so cool.
Christine 5 years ago
Professional photographer here. I find this service odd as most of the images are from older photographs that just need to have a better scan. The 'blur' we see here is due to a low res digital scan, but the real image (prints or even better, negatives or color slides) will have all this information and more without having to have a computer 'guess' what your family looked like. I don't see any film grain, meaning these images have all the information for sure!
Fixin'Ta 5 years ago
But if a blurry scan is all you have (as is the case for me, with several photos that have been shared around the family, and I don't have access to the original, or even to the person who has the original), then maybe this is a decent choice to get a better image...?
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MrTree1779 5 years ago
Half of these are truly "de-blurring" the image, guessing at what the details are. And they do a good job. The other half are just "colorizing" black-and-white photos, and not "enhancing" by adding detail. And 1/4 of these images are famous people, so, no points there.
Tor Rolf Strøm 5 years ago
Just incredible! does seem to have a slight problem with chins, but hey. Imagine this in ten years time... just imagine!! as a visual artist I fear for my job!
Marek Yanchurak 5 years ago
Zoom in and enhance, Enhance. Enhance! Look this is just guesswork on the AI's part. They've seen/processed enough hi res photos of people to be able to competently fill in the details, but they're still doing just that - filling in the details. They are not pulling that information out of the photographs themselves. It's interesting, but lets not assume it's something that it's not.
N G 5 years ago
That's exactly what i was thinking, thanks for typing it in to legible English
Load More Replies... Dror Caspi 5 years ago
I uploaded a blurry photo of my family. Definitely not us after reconstruction. Yes, you get clear photos but of random people.
RaroaRaroa 5 years ago
I thought that would be a good way to test it. Upload bad quality photos of people you actually know. Thanks for saving me from wasting my time. :-)
Load More Replies... Hans 5 years ago
This sounds like an advert for this service. Sure, the results look impressive and seem to make history more tangible. However, what you see on the enhanced photo is not how the person(s) looked like but how an AI algorithm predicts they might have looked like. This makes a huge difference!
Fixin'Ta 5 years ago
Looks to me like it's super close. Our minds can extrapolate what the images probably looked like for real, and that's what the AI is doing in "print" form. I'd rather have a close approximation to what my g-g-grandparents looked like than be stuck with a blurry image that doesn't get any closer than the AI approximation.
Load More Replies... John Forman 5 years ago
Have they tried using it on those blurry photos of Bigfoot? That I would like to see!
iblowsheep 5 years ago
I would bet that for every one of these "impressive enhancements" there are dozens of failures.
WilvanderHeijden 5 years ago
Ads are getting smarter and you pay for your enhanced photos with your privacy and data and even money when you decide to subscribe to My Heritage.
Tor Rolf Strøm 5 years ago
See!? This is what I was saying! A week or so ago, I commented on a post about movie myths, and one was about "enhance" in movies, where they enhance a blurry or pixilated photo. Just a few years ago that was impossible, but now? Its god damn reality! It's just so cool.
Christine 5 years ago
Professional photographer here. I find this service odd as most of the images are from older photographs that just need to have a better scan. The 'blur' we see here is due to a low res digital scan, but the real image (prints or even better, negatives or color slides) will have all this information and more without having to have a computer 'guess' what your family looked like. I don't see any film grain, meaning these images have all the information for sure!
Fixin'Ta 5 years ago
But if a blurry scan is all you have (as is the case for me, with several photos that have been shared around the family, and I don't have access to the original, or even to the person who has the original), then maybe this is a decent choice to get a better image...?
Load More Replies... MrTree1779 5 years ago
Half of these are truly "de-blurring" the image, guessing at what the details are. And they do a good job. The other half are just "colorizing" black-and-white photos, and not "enhancing" by adding detail. And 1/4 of these images are famous people, so, no points there.
Tor Rolf Strøm 5 years ago
Just incredible! does seem to have a slight problem with chins, but hey. Imagine this in ten years time... just imagine!! as a visual artist I fear for my job!
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