Use case · genealogy hobbyist / family historian
Bring grandfather's wedding photo or great-grandmother's portrait to life. DeOldify-tuned AI adds historically plausible color — runs in the browser, ten seconds.
Family photo archives almost always start the same way: a shoebox of black-and-white prints from the 1920s through 1960s, faces of grandparents and great-grandparents looking serious for the camera. You scan them with a phone, upload to your Ancestry tree, and wonder what they actually looked like — eye color, dress color, the green of the lawn behind the church. Photoshop's Neural Filters can colorize, but only if you have a Creative Cloud subscription and a recent build of Photoshop. MyHeritage's colorizer is excellent but locks behind a paid subscription after 10 free conversions.
The free alternatives have caught up. DeOldify, the open-source neural network released in 2019 by Jason Antic, is now the de facto standard. It looks at grayscale tonal gradients, infers what objects are present (skin, clothing, foliage, sky), and applies a perceptually realistic color palette. The same network that Adobe uses internally and MyHeritage licenses is freely available, just not in a friendly UI.
Pixelift wraps DeOldify (plus DDColor as a backup for high-contrast portraits) in a browser interface. Upload your black-and-white scan, the AI colorizes in about 8 seconds, download the result. Free for 5 photos per session, no signup needed for the first try. The Plus plan adds the "guided colorize" mode where you describe specific colors ("blue eyes, brown hair, green dress") and the AI applies them with text-to-image control.
Upload the black-and-white photo
JPG, PNG, or TIFF up to 20MB. Phone scans work fine — does not need to be high resolution.
Look for: Hero dropzone
Choose colorization mode
Auto = DeOldify infers all colors. Portrait = optimized for skin tones. Landscape = optimized for outdoor scenes.
Look for: Mode tabs above the result preview
Optionally describe known colors
For Plus users only. "Blue uniform, gold buttons, brown background" — AI applies these as constraints.
Look for: Prompt box (locked for free users)
Click Colorize, wait ~8 seconds
DeOldify processes on cloud GPU. Faster than Photoshop Neural Filters on most laptops.
Look for: Purple gradient button
Download as PNG or JPG
Original resolution preserved. Use Upscaler tool afterward if you want to enlarge for print.
Look for: Download button on result
Why Pixelift
MyHeritage Color charges $89/year after 10 free conversions. Photoshop Neural Filters need Creative Cloud ($21/mo). Pixelift gives you DeOldify in browser, 5 free per day, no signup needed for the first colorization.
Skin tones, hair, foliage, and sky are usually accurate — the AI is trained on millions of color photos and learned what these things look like. Clothing colors are guesses based on typical fashion of the era. For meaningful accuracy ("grandmother's actual eye color"), use the Plus guided mode with descriptive prompts.
Both. The AI first normalizes the input to grayscale (removes sepia tint), then applies new color. Faded prints with light sepia work fine. Heavily damaged or torn photos should first go through the Old Photo Restore tool before colorizing.
Pixelift outputs at the same resolution as your upload. For prints over A4, run the result through the Upscaler tool (4× scale, Portrait preset) afterward — that combines colorization + 4× resolution boost.
Yes. Files are processed on EU GPU servers (Hetzner Frankfurt), deleted within 30 days, never used to train models. GDPR-compliant. You retain copyright on outputs.
Switch presets (Portrait → Auto) and retry — different DeOldify variants handle subjects differently. For complex group photos, sometimes splitting the photo into halves and colorizing separately produces better results. Plus plan guided mode fixes this with prompts.
Same underlying technology — both wrap DeOldify with their own UI. MyHeritage limits 10 free conversions then $89/year. Pixelift gives 5 per day free (= ~150/month), and Plus is $39/month for unlimited. If genealogy is your hobby, Pixelift comes out cheaper.
No signup required for the first try. 5 free credits at registration + 3 daily.
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