Reimagine: an application to restore old family photos using AI

MyHeritage, AI over the shoulder

The little guys from the MyHeritage site, who have made a specialty of regilding old images or animating portraits – a bit like photos or paintings in the world of Harry Potter —, are back with a new AI-based solution: Reimagine.

Photo restoration at your fingertips

This application available on iOS and Android allows you to restore old photos that would be stored on your phone or that you want to scan from a dusty photo album. Thanks to an AI “peak”in the words of the Israeli developer, and based on the cloud, the scanner integrated into the application analyzes the snapshot to detect people, time damage and make certain adjustments.

Impressive results

Thus, in addition to an automatic cropping function (which can always be adjusted), you can choose to colorize, enhance, animate or repair the chosen image – or combine everything. The result is quite impressive as far as the first three criteria are concerned. The featured 25-year-old sibling photo has regained a luster it may never have had. The colors are more vivid than ever and the sharpness is enhanced.

Bringing inanimate objects to life

We also find a technology already present with Deep Nostalgia, and which allows to apply to the faces present on the picture several types of animations. If the subject is face-on and recognizable, the result is impressive, although not always realistic. There is an almost disturbing side to seeing the disconcerting ease with which a mobile application animates motionless faces in a few seconds…

The repair function could not be applied to our image, which was not degraded enough for the app. MyHeritage, however, assures that Reimagine can restore scratched or partially torn photos. The service offered is impressive, but it is not free; after a week of free trial, Reimagine will cost you a whopping €8.99 per month or €59.99 per year.