My Heritage (myhertiage.com) has some tools to use on photos. I wrote a few blog posts a while ago where I showed what their tools could do. Here are links for them.
Colorization Makes Old Photos New Again
The Good, The Bad, and The Funny
They’ve added more tools recently, and I tried them out on a photo of my uncle, Carlisle Entzminger MARTIN who died in the 1977. (You’ll notice links to videos on my YouTube channel. Had to be done that way. The videos took up too much space on my website storage.)
Why did I use Uncle Carlisle?
Well, he didn’t have any children that might be upset by seeing his move and hearing him ‘talk’.
The photo I choose is one taken of Uncle Carlisle when he was in the Navy. These tools work best with a clear photo showing the person’s face.
Here’s the cropped photo I made of the original.
Now let’s get to what the tools can do.
One of the new tools animates photos. And there are several animation styles to choose from. The Basic tool creates a pretty good animation.
I also animated Uncle Carlisle’s photo in other styles. Some were ok. Some didn’t fit his personality, so they weren’t right. And a few were comical. Take a look at a select few of them.
The next style I tried is called Approval. This is probably the only look of approval anyone has ever seen from Carlisle! Here’s a link to to it on my YouTube channel.
The next one I tried is called Smile. Carlisle wasn’t a smiley kind of guy, but I did see him smile sometimes. Some of the smiles fit. Some don’t. Here’s a link to it on my YouTube channel.
The Dance animation made me laugh. I can’t imagine him ever moving like this. Here’s a link to it on my YouTube channel.
The other new tool is called DeepStory.
With this tool, you write a first-person narrative that the photo will ‘read’ to you. It sounded cool, so I gave it a chance. Here’s a link to it on my YouTube channel. It’s a little over a minute long.
My assessment of these tools
The animation tool is awesome. I also animated my grandmother, Florrie THOMAS MARTIN, and I cried when I watched it. It looked like how Grandma moved. I will do a separate blog post with her animation tests in it and those of a few other deceased family members like my Heiser grandfather, Daniel W. HEISER.
The DeepStory tool is not one I would use again. There are a limited number of computer-generated voices to choose from, and none were close to Uncle Carlisle’s real voice. Also, the mouth movement wasn’t authentic enough for my liking.
What do you think about these animations and the DeepStory tool from what you’ve seen in this blogpost? Comment and let me know.
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Let’s be honest in regards to Uncle Carlisle!! How many times did you ever see him actually smile, grin or just respond with the glee in his eyes? You have 15 seconds to answer this question! Can you name the where he was when Pearl Harbor was attacked? Did the real Uncle Carl ever survive Pearl Harbor? Did anyone survive his driving to the Mtn. Cabin on the Rocky one-lane drive? Questions about Uncle Carl remain unanswered, even today!!!!!
LOL. I may have seen him smile a few times but they were sly, sneaky smiles. And I never saw glee in his eyes, no. You are so right about unanswered questions about U.C. He was quite a character.
Wow, honestly I cant wait to try this for my family members that I have never met. This would be a treat for many o f my family who always wondered what words could not express about the family who had early deaths. Thank you for sharing your results. I’m very please with all your efforts.
I’m glad you liked it. It was fun to create them. I’m sure you’ll have fun doing it, too. In a few weeks I will have a new blog post with all my grandparents moving. 🙂