Coldstream Guards photo albums and attestation records added to Findmypast

Added to Findmypast (www.findmypast.co.uk) today: 

British Army, Coldstream Guards 1800-1981

This week's biggest update comes to our Coldstream Guards collection, to which we've added 17,896 photo album records and 497 attestations. Founded in 1650, the Coldstream Guards is one of the British Army's oldest regiments. It has historically been responsible for the protection of the Royal family, and is thus is also considered to be one of the army's most prestigious regiments.

With this update, our Coldstream Guards collection now totals in at over 167,000 records, making it easy to track down relevant information about your ancestors that may have served with this regiment between 1800 and 1981.

The first part of this record update consists of images and transcriptions of over 17,000 photo album entries. Glean high quality images from some of history's key moments - who knows, you may even spot a familiar face or two.

But that's not all - on top of these detail-rich images, there are also attestation records for you to explore. (497 attestations in total)

For further details visit https://www.findmypast.co.uk/blog/new/coldstream-guards-south-wales-borderers

Chris

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, on Threads at @scottishgenesblog and via Mastodon at https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGENES.

National Library of Scotland touring exhibitions in September

From the National Library of Scotland (www.nls.uk), news of  touring exhibnitions making their way around Scotland in September:

Scotland’s Photograph Album – Explore 100 years of Scottish photography at Newington Library, available until 03 November. See https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/directory-record/1229192/newington-library for more information. 

 

Lifting the Lid – Learn about the history of Scottish food and drink. The tour around West Lothian Libraries starts today. To see specific locations and dates, visit https://www.westlothian.gov.uk/libraries

Going to the Pictures – Discover the magic of the movies in Scotland by visiting our displays touring around @LiveArgyllLib starting with Oban Library from 20 September. Visit https://liveargyll.co.uk/facilities/libraries/ for more information. 

 

If you are interested in hosting one of our free touring displays, please contact exhibitions@nls.uk

 

(Source: NLS on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/NationalLibraryOfScotland)

 

 

Chris

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, on Threads at @scottishgenesblog and via Mastodon at https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGENES.

MyHeritage introduces Photo Tagger

From MyHeritage (www.myheritage.com):

We’re delighted to introduce Photo Tagger, a free new feature on the MyHeritage mobile app that lets you easily tag multiple photos of the same individual in one go. Previously, tagging photos meant reviewing and tagging them one by one, which was time consuming. Photo Tagger makes organizing your family photos easier and accelerates your productivity, enabling you to tag hundreds of photos in minutes. You can still tag your photos individually as before, but Photo Tagger adds convenient and accurate bulk tagging.

For more on the release visit https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/08/introducing-photo-tagger-tag-multiple-photos-instantly

Chris

My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

MyHeritage offers free access to updated photo enhancement tools

MyHeritage (www.myheritage.com) is offering free and unlimited use of its MyHeritage In Color, Photo Enhancer, and Photo Repair tools from January 24th to February 5th 2022, to tie in with a release of an updated version of its colourisation tool.

You can find more about these tools at https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/01/improved-color-restoration-for-photos-on-myheritage/.

Chris

My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

WDYTYA magazine Family Photo of the Year competition

Who Do You Think You Are? magazine (www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com) has launched a Family Photo of the Year competition, and is enouraging readers to submit family photos to try to win within 6 different categories:

• Category one – On holiday
• Category two – Special occasion
• Category three – Dressing up
• Category four – Solo photo
• Category five – Family together
• Category six – My family and other animals

From the magazine's site:

How will winners be selected?

We have chosen six categories for people to submit their photos under and we will be looking for good quality, striking images that capture the imagination. Each entry must be accompanied by no more than 50 words telling us something about the photograph and why you chose it. Don’t worry if you don’t know who the subject is in the image – we all have mystery photographs in our collection – you can just share what the photograph makes you feel or why you love it so much.

As well as character, composition and impact, we will also be judging photographs on the quality of the surviving image so please submit a high-resolution digital copy (see below).

Although there is no cut-off date for how modern the photographs can be, we will score photographs for rarity which will benefit older photographs.

Our judges will select a shortlist of six images for each category based on the image alone. The accompanying description will only be taken into account at the final stage when choosing a winner from the six finalists.

The overall winner will be chosen from the winners of the six categories and will be the image that the judges decide is the most striking. We will be looking for a family photo that would stand out in anyone’s family album.

The winner of each category will receive a beautiful framed professional print of their winning photograph plus a year’s subscription to Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine. There will also be an overall winner who will receive £200 on top of their category prize courtesy of Vivid-Pix the photo editing software specialists. All the winning photographs will appear in a future issue of the magazine along with some of our favourites from the shortlists.

For further details visit the magazine's website at www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/article/family-photo-competition/.

(With thanks to Sarah Williams)

Chris

My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

A wee dander around Strathaven

Last night I spent the first night away from my home in 18 months, after attending a wedding in Strathaven in South Lanarkshire. And this morning, after breakfast, I had a wee dander around the place!

Some pics which may be of interest if you have connections to Strathaven:

Chris

Just out, Sharing Your Family History Online is on sale at https://bit.ly/SharingFamHist. Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 is also out, as are Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

MyHeritage releases new Photo Repair tool

I was given a preview last night by MyHeritage (www.myheritage.com) of a new feature which has now gone live today within its photographs tool kit - an option to facilitate repairs.

Introducing Photo Repair: New Feature to Automagically Fix Scratched and Damaged Photos

We did it again! We’re excited to introduce Photo Repair — the newest tool in the MyHeritage photo toolbox. Photo Repair automatically fixes scratches, tears, holes, stains and other damage on historical photos. With this additional tool, MyHeritage is the only company to offer a complete suite of features for colorizing, restoring, enhancing, animating and now repairing historical photos, all of which produce exceptional results.

Photo Repair is extremely easy to use. Simply upload a scratched or damaged photo to MyHeritage, and if we detect damage, we will suggest that you apply Photo Repair by displaying a Repair button. If you choose to use it, with a single click, the scratches and damage in the photo will disappear like magic!

The technology for Photo Repair was licensed exclusively by MyHeritage from DeOldify, created by deep learning experts Jason Antic and Dana Kelley. Photo Repair is one of several technologies that have been licensed from DeOldify and integrated into MyHeritage’s photo tools.

Old photos can be priceless treasures. They give us glimpses into moments in our ancestors’ lives, frozen in time. The photos themselves may have traveled across continents, witnessing the trials and tribulations of those they depicted and their loved ones; or they might have been tucked away in an attic or basement and forgotten for decades. Old photos have often been stored in less than ideal conditions, making them susceptible to tears, creases, and stains.

At MyHeritage, we believe that photos are one of the most tangible and powerful ways to connect with the past, and consider their preservation as paramount to documenting family history, both on the personal and family level and on a greater scale. That’s why we make it easy for you to scan, upload, and preserve your photos on MyHeritage. We believe there is great value in restoring and enhancing photos, and allowing users to view them as they may have looked when first printed. But we are also committed to the integrity and authenticity of the original photos, which is why any improvements we make, including Photo Repair, never modify the original, which is always left intact. We always create a new copy alongside the original, on which the improvements are applied.

When a photo is uploaded to MyHeritage, a specialized detection algorithm runs in the background and determines if it has sustained damage. If so, a Repair button is made available, ensuring that users won’t waste time attempting to repair photos that don’t need it. Photos may be repaired effortlessly in a single click and the process takes only a few seconds. The default repair model, named Gentle Repair, will fix most types of damage with minimal changes to the rest of the photo. For photos with more substantial damage, an Extensive Repair model can be applied.

The full release is at https://blog.myheritage.com/2021/05/introducing-photo-repair-new-feature-to-automatically-fix-scratched-and-damaged-photos/

COMMENT:  I have had a go myself earlier today on a photograph of my grandfather taken as a wee boy in Brussels, Belgium, in 1907, which was sent to Scotland as a postcard and which has been fairly damaged down the years. 

The image on the left is obviously the original, and the repaired image is to the right. The image is an improvement, although in this case, if I tried to further improve the contrast and to colorise it, problems begin to emerge - although I have been able to further correct some of those using Microsoft's own paint tools. 

 

Nevertheless, there is a substantial amount of good stuff going on here in the non-colourised version, with the tears that were in the original nicely repaired, and I can easily see me now going in to manually address some minor 'dots' and specs through another programme. So overall, a big thumbs up, but as with any technology, it will work better in some circumstances than others.

(With thanks to Daniel Horowitz)

Chris

Just out, Sharing Your Family History Online is on sale at https://bit.ly/SharingFamHist. Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 is also out, as are Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

MyHeritage further enhances its photo colorisation tool

From MyHeritage (www.myheritage.com):

We are happy to announce the release of a new colorization model for MyHeritage In Color™, which produces even better results when colorizing black and white photos!

MyHeritage In Color™ is based on deep-learning technology licensed by MyHeritage exclusively from DeOldify —the super talented team of Jason Antic and Dana Kelley, following pioneering work by our team member Maor Cohen. The feature quickly became a viral sensation, with more than 16 million photos colorized since its release. Jason and Dana have been hard at work to improve colorization even further, as they are, in their own words, obsessively pursuing the perfection of colorization using deep learning. The new colorization model is the fruit of their continued efforts, and going forward, we will use the new model as the default option when you colorize your photos.

The new model provides better results for most photos, but in some cases the two older models may provide superior results. In many cases, the differences are so minor that most people won’t be able to tell the difference. If you colorize a photo and are not pleased with the result or want to seek perfection, you can toggle between the three different colorization models in the settings to see which one produces optimal results for your photo.

Any photos that you’ve already colorized already will not be automatically modified. If you wish to apply the new model to a photo you have colorized previously, which is recommended only if you were not pleased with the initial results, visit the photo page on MyHeritage and adjust the colorization settings.

For further details visit https://blog.myheritage.com/2020/12/myheritage-in-color-just-got-better/. The tool itself is available at https://www.myheritage.com/incolor

Chris 

Pre-order my next book, Sharing Your Family History Online, at https://bit.ly/SharingFamHist. My book Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 is also out, as are Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

MyHeritage releases new photos enhancement tool

This looks to be another great innovation from MyHeritage (www.myheritage.com):

Introducing the MyHeritage Photo Enhancer
June 12, 2020 05:48 AM Eastern Daylight Time

TEL AVIV, Israel & LEHI, Utah--MyHeritage, the leading global service for discovering your past and empowering your future, announced today the release of the MyHeritage Photo Enhancer, a powerful new feature that brings blurry, low-resolution or low-quality photos into sharp focus. Photos are enhanced using specialized technology that produces outstanding, high-definition results.

The MyHeritage Photo Enhancer takes old or blurry photos and increases their resolution so that the faces that appear in them are crisp and well defined. The Photo Enhancer is powered by deep learning technology that was licensed by MyHeritage and seamlessly integrated into the company’s platform. It infers what the faces in the photos looked like with exceptional results. Enhancement is particularly useful for historical photos where the faces are often small and blurry, but works equally well on new color photos too. The feature works best on photos in which multiple people appear, and enhanced faces can be viewed one-by-one. The original photos remain intact and are not changed by the enhancement process, which creates separate versions alongside the originals.

“The MyHeritage Photo Enhancer joins a robust suite of technology-based features on MyHeritage that help people around the world connect with their family history in new and meaningful ways,” said Gilad Japhet, Founder and CEO of MyHeritage. “Following the recent success of our photo colorization feature, we saw photo enhancement as a natural next step, and are thrilled to integrate this technology into our family history platform. This addition makes MyHeritage the best platform for uploading, enhancing, and sharing historical photos, bar none. It also makes genealogy fun, as it should be.”

In February 2020, the company launched MyHeritage In Color™, an AI-based feature that colorizes black and white photos. The feature gained tremendous popularity, with 11.4 million photos colorized thus far and shared in abundance on social media. Enhancement and colorization complement one another, and users are invited to enhance photos that they’ve previously colorized, as well as other photos.

Integration with family trees

Millions of people around the world use the MyHeritage platform to explore their family history and digitally preserve their family photos. MyHeritage users have uploaded hundreds of millions of photos to the platform and enriched them with meta-data and tags, including the date, place, and individuals appearing in the photos. The MyHeritage Photo Enhancer provides users with a greater appreciation of their heritage through the scaled-up faces of their ancestors. Together with colorization, these innovative features delight users with new perspectives of their family history.

The MyHeritage Photo Enhancer is available on the MyHeritage platform and on MyHeritage’s free mobile app for iOS and Android, which is the perfect tool for scanning and digitizing old photos in physical albums. Photos that are enhanced and/or colorized can easily be shared with family and friends on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and other social media.

MyHeritage is committed to preserving the authenticity of historical documents, and therefore differentiates enhanced photos from the originals using a special embossed magic wand symbol in the bottom left corner of enhanced photos. In photos that were colorized, a similar palette symbol appears, and photos that were both enhanced and colorized feature both symbols side by side. This allows others to quickly determine if a photo has been modified. MyHeritage is strictly committed to the privacy of its users and ensures that photo enhancement and colorization take place exclusively on MyHeritage servers.

The MyHeritage Photo Enhancer is a freemium feature on MyHeritage. Ten photos may be enhanced for free, after which continued use of this feature requires a subscription.

Access the new tool at https://www.myheritage.com/photo-enhancer

(With thanks to Daniel Horowitz)

Chris

My next 5 week Scottish Research Online course starts June 8th - see www.pharostutors.com/details.php?coursenumber=102. My next book, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 is out shortly, also available are Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

Free access to MyHeritage in Color until April 23rd

From Daniel Horowitz at MyHeritage (www.myheritage.com):

I’m happy to share that we’re giving everyone FREE and unlimited access to MyHeritage In Color™ from March 23 to April 23, so that people everywhere can join in the fun of colorizing their black and white photos. Ordinarily only 10 photos can be colorized by users who do not have a Complete plan, but now, you can colorize as many photos as you’d like for free.

Colorizing photos is the perfect activity for anyone who is isolated at home. We invite everyone to pull out their family photo albums, colorize their photos, and start reminiscing. Over the coming month, anyone who shares their colorized photos on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram with the hashtag #ColorBeatsCoronavirusBlues and tags @MyHeritage will enter a weekly draw. Each week we’ll select one lucky winner who will receive a free MyHeritage Complete subscription!

You can access the feature at https://www.myheritage.com/incolor

Have fun!

(With thanks to Daniel)

Chris

You can pre-order my new book, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 (out April). Also available, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

Gilad Japhet discusses MyHeritage's colourisation tool

The CEO of MyHeritage (www.myheritage.com), Gilad Japhet, gave a talk at the recent RootsTech show in the US, in which he discussed several items, including MyHeritage In Color, how the idea was conceived during a company-wide “hackathon,” how the technology was sourced, and a little about how it works.

You can watch the talk at https://youtu.be/TbePA_R6J7k, or embedded below. The discussion on MyHeritage in Colour kicks off at about 8 minutes in.

For my thoughts n MyHeritage in Colour, visit my earlier blog post at https://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2020/02/thoughts-on-myheritages-colourisation.html.

(With thanks to Daniel Horowitz)

Chris

You can pre-order my new book, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 (out April). Also available, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

Thoughts on MyHeritage's colourisation tool

I've been having quite a bit of fun with the new tool from MyHeritage (www.myheritage.com) that allows you to change black and white images into colour pictures (see https://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2020/02/myheritage-launches-tool-to-colourise.html).  Here are a few rellies I would like you to meet:

Let's start with my paternal grandfather Charles Paton, photographed in Brussels, Belgium in 1908. For me, the MyHeritage tool has been worth it just for this...!

The cute baby below is me - with my mother Cherie seated, and my aunt and godmother Sheila, both sadly now passed away:

Below, my great uncle John Paton (seated), as a civilian POW at the Ruhleben camp in Germany in 1916:

And from a passport photo, my maternal grandmother Martha:

The MyHeritage tool is not only fun, it is beyond addictive! As another exercise though, I wondered how accurate the computer anticipated colours are compared with the colours of an original image, and so, as an experiment, I decolourised a colour photo from my wedding day (of myself and my mother), and then recolourised them through MyHeritage. The first image is the original:

 

Followed by the decolourised version:

And then MyHeritage's effort:

As can be seen, the artificially colourised version is off an a few points, and yet I don't think that really matters at all, because the emotional response from the generated image is the same.There is something magical about seeing an old black and white image restored into colour (even if not 100% true), because we live in a colourful world. When I showed some of the images to my younger brother, he commented that there was something "wonderfully World War 2 in Colour" about them, i.e. they seem so much fresher and closer to us, and yet still have an air of history about them.

I wish that family history toys like this came out on a daily basis - well done MyHeritage!

Chris

You can pre-order my new book, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 (out April). Also available, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

MyHeritage launches tool to colourise black and white images

From MyHeritage (www.myheritage.com):

Introducing MyHeritage In Color™
February 11, 2020 01:46 PM Eastern Standard Time

TEL AVIV, Israel & LEHI, Utah--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MyHeritage, the leading global service for discovering your past and empowering your future, announced today the release of MyHeritage In Color™, an innovative feature that automatically colorizes black and white photos and produces incredible results. Photos are colorized using sophisticated deep learning technology that is currently exclusive to MyHeritage.

MyHeritage In Color™ produces lifelike colorized photos with exceptional attention to detail. The technology was trained using millions of photos and has developed an understanding of our world and its colors. The results are more realistic and of superior quality to those generated by other automatic colorization tools currently available. The black and white photos remain intact and are not changed by the colorization process, which produces new photos alongside the original ones.

The photo colorization technology was licensed by MyHeritage from DeOldify, created by software engineers Jason Antic and Dana Kelley. The technology is based on Self-Attention Generative Adversarial Networks (SAGAN), introduced in May 2018. An early version of the DeOldify technology was contributed by Antic to the public domain in November 2018. Antic and Kelley updated it in May 2019. Since then, Antic and Kelley have continued to improve and fine-tune the technology commercially. Their latest version produces colorized photos of unprecedented quality and is currently available only on MyHeritage.

“The photos colorized by MyHeritage In Color™ are breathtaking. Joining our easy-to-use family tree tools, billions of historical records, and automatic matching technologies, this amazing new feature helps fulfill our mission of bringing the past back to life,” said Gilad Japhet, Founder and CEO of MyHeritage. “On a personal note, it’s been very emotional for me to see my black and white family photos reimagined in color for the first time. The reactions of my family members with whom I’ve shared them, both young and old, have been priceless. Millions of people will now realize how cool family history really is.”

“After dedicating the past few years to developing photo colorization technology and obsessively pursuing its perfection, we’re excited to see DeOldify integrated into MyHeritage's family history platform, so that people can reveal new insights from their historical family photos,” said Jason Antic, co-creator of DeOldify. “We identify with MyHeritage’s vision of helping everyone understand their family story, and our technology will give people a deeper connection with those that came before them. We are genuinely very excited about partnering with a company that has such an admirable mission and are happy that they will help us enhance the technology even further in the coming years.”

Seamless Integration with Family Trees

Millions of people worldwide use MyHeritage to explore their family history, and to digitize and preserve their old family photos and upload them to their online family trees. Users have already uploaded hundreds of millions of black and white photos to the MyHeritage platform, enhanced them with meta-data, and tagged the individuals who appear in them. With MyHeritage In Color™, users can now colorize their historical photos in seconds and experience a deep connection to their family history like never before.

Colorization is available in MyHeritage’s online photo albums as well as in the free MyHeritage mobile app for iOS and Android, which is the perfect tool for scanning old photos in physical albums and converting them to digital media. Colorized photos can easily be shared with family and friends on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and other social media.

As part of MyHeritage’s commitment to preserving the authenticity of historical documents, the company differentiates colorized photos from those photographed originally in color using a special embossed palette symbol in the bottom left corner of colorized photos. While highly realistic, automatically colorized photos have simulated colors, which may differ from the real ones. MyHeritage hopes that this responsible practice will be adopted by others who use photo colorization technology.

MyHeritage In Color™ is a freemium feature on MyHeritage. Several photos may be colorized for free, after which continued use of this feature requires a subscription.

UPDATE: I've just been having a play, and this is my christening photo from 1971 in Helensburgh, Scotland, now colourised.

I LOVE this new colouring tool!

Chris

You can pre-order my new book, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 (out April). Also available, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.