How I brought old family photos to life with AI colorization

How I used AI to restore a single 1930s photo into a cherished family keepsake.

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I have always enjoyed photography. My dad had a Kodak Duaflex camera, which used Kodak 620 film. Most of the family pictures he took in the late 1950s and 1960s were black and white prints. A generation earlier, when my parents were growing up, photography was still a rare and special activity. Photos of my parents from Dad’s time in the service during World War II or Mom’s college years in the late 1940s were all in black and white.

The advent of AI has made colorizing older photos much easier. Recently, while researching my mom’s history, I found a yearbook photo of her from 1947. I uploaded it to ChatGPT, asking it to colorize the image. The result was pleasantly surprising.

Colorize this photo

Here is Mom’s original yearbook photo:

And here is the AI-colorized version:

After sharing these photos with my wife, she asked if I could do the same for a tiny thumbnail of her mother and uncle, taken around 1930. This photo was about 2″ by 2″, so I captured it with my iPhone 15 before starting the restoration process.

I instructed ChatGPT to clean-up the photo of Uncle Charles and Betty with detailed instructions. While the AI did most of the work, I made some final adjustments and blending in GIMP.

Clean up and repair the picture, 
remove the ragged edge on the left, 
sharpen the images, and 
colorize them with natural skin tones of non-black children

The final result was a restored, colorized 5″ x 7″ photo that my wife now treasures. This was the only picture she had of her mother as a child and Uncle Charles.

Bringing old photos back to life with AI helps preserve memories in a fresh and more vivid way. A few simple steps can turn black-and-white snapshots into colorful keepsakes worth sharing.

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