Nancy H. Vest, Writer

Sharing Stories and Wisdom from Generation to Generation

in Photographs

The Good, The Bad, and The Funny

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A few months ago, MyHeritage.com introduced a colorization tool for photos. I blogged about it here and showed examples of photos I used the tool on and the amazing results. 

Now MyHeritage.com has introduced an enhancement tool for photos, too.

I couldn’t wait to try it out after watching this webinar about what the tool can do: New Ways to See Your Photo Clues on My Heritage with Maureen Taylor. (I don’t know why there’s a line through this link because it works! Also, the presentation starts at about the 8:45 mark so fast forward to there.) Maureen Taylor, AKA The Photo Detective, is skilled at what she does. Check her out here.

For this week’s blog post I’m showing before and afters of photos I used both tools on. Are the tools perfect? No. Are the enhanced images reliable? A lot of them are, and one of them made my cry. Some enhancements are questionable. Others are just outright funny.

The following transformations are good or great.

Side by side photo comparison of B&W and color version of same photo. Two man leaning on a piece of log cutting equipment.
Joel Daniel Martin (1886-1955) and his son, Carlisle Entzminger Martin (1915-1977) (my grandfather and uncle) taken in late 1930’s.
Closeup of a clean shaven young man with short, light brown hair.
Close up of Carlisle from the photo above. It’s not bad.
side by side comparison of B&W and color versions of same photo. Vintage photo of a young man, standing and with one hand on a chair.
Joel Daniel Martin (1886-1955), my grandfather. About 1908 and about 22 years old.
Close up of a clean-shaven young man and short, wavy, dark hair and dark eyes.
Closeup of Joel Daniel Martin (1886-1955) taken from the previous photo.
I think it’s a good resemblance.
Comparison photos of a young woman with dark hair in a white dress taken in early 1910's.
My grandmother, Florrie Thomas Martin (1894-1979) about 1912 and about 18 years old. This is comparison of the colorized version vs. the colorized and enhanced version. There is some improvement, yes.
Comparison of black and white and color version of same photo. Group of 5 smiling people on a beach outing.
The woman on the far left is Myrtle Hillard Burroughs (1903-1977), whose desk I wrote about last week. The balding man in back is her husband, Nelson (1898-1946). The young man in front is my father, Charles Leroy Heiser (1913-2001). I don’t know who the other woman is. I want to date this photo about 1940. This was an excellent photo to start with. The color and enhancements made it stunning.
Comparison of B&W vs. color photo of young man with a mustache and short wavy brown hair, wearing a brown jacket.
Jeremiah Daniel Thomas (1858-1946), my great-grandfather. Yes, the photo needs some REAL restoration work, but I love what the tools did anyway. He looks to be about 20, so this was taken about 1878.
Comparison of blurry B&W photo to a colorized and enhanced version. A upper torso and face photo of a young woman in white dress and pulled up dark hair.
This is the one that made me cry. The photo on the left is believed to be the only photo of my grandmother, Goldie Isabel Price Heiser (1893-1919). She died in 1919 at age 25 from the Spanish Flu. Once I colorized and enhanced it, I was taken by her beautiful face. And then when I did a comparison of this photo along with her likely mother and daughter…well, I knew this has to be my grandmother.
Close up of a smiling young woman with dark hair
Here’s a closeup of the enhanced and colorized photo above.
Three panel photo of an older woman with dark hair, and two young women with dark hair
Comparison of enhanced and colorized photos of three generations:
my great-grandmother, my grandmother, and my aunt.
Sallie Pyles Price (1862-1940), Goldie Price Heiser (1893-1919), Dorothy Heiser Brown (1915-1998)

A Bad One

The next one is a photo I enhanced only in hopes of improving the color balance. Clearly the tool is not good for that.

My uncle Jerry Martin (1923-1998), with my grandmother, Florrie Thomas Martin (1894-1979),
and Jerry’s daughters.
You can see the one on the right shows little improvement. A fail for sure.

And now for the funny.

Side by side photos of a middle aged man with a mustache and dark curly hair.
These are both of my great-grandfather, Adolphus Burdine Martin (1867-1917).
These are two photos that I used both the enhancement and colorization tools on.
The one on the left is from the family-famous Rainmaker photo. It made me laugh! Adolphus looks to be cross-eyed and wearing glass. He wasn’t cross-eyed and he didn’t wear glasses, but the tool can only work with what it sees so shadows and lines look like things other than they are. The photo on the right is a much better likeness, although it looks like he shaved off one side his mustache and not the other. But it sort of looks that way on the left, too. Was that fashionable then!?!
Three photo spread. Left is of an elderly woman in a chair with 5 people standing around her. Middle is a close up of the photo on the left. Right photo is a close up of the elderly woman. She has white hair and wears glasses. She also appears to have facial hair due to the shortcomings of the photo enhancement tool used.
The photo on the left and middle is of my 2nd great-grandmother, Flora Griffin Grant (1851-1930) (seated) with her children around her. The left is only colorized. The middle one is both colorized and enhanced. They look pretty good. That is until you look at the closeup of Flora on the right. I admit I did laugh when I first saw it. The shadows and lines added facial hair, and gives her a manly appearance to say the least.
Three photo spread. First two are B&W vs. color photos of 3 elderly people. Two men standing. A woman sitting. Third photo is a closeup of the woman.
Siblings Jeremiah Daniel Thomas (1858-1946) (L), James Renatus Thomas (1865-1949) (R), and Sarah Thomas Grant (1852-1937) (seated.) The enhanced and colorized version in the middle is better than the original, but the closeup on Sarah again shows a woman with a manly appearance due to shadows, etc, and part of her glasses are missing. My sister was visiting when I enhanced this one, and we looked at the closeup together. We were both quite amused.

I so enjoyed enhancing and colorizing these photos. I hope you enjoyed them, too, and that they made you smile and chuckle. Please comment below and let me know what you think.

Copyright © 2020 Nancy H. Vest   All Rights Reserved

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Comments

  1. Claire says

    I enjoyed looking at these pictures. These tools are pretty amazing. I love the look in Joel Daniel’s eyes. I would love to have had a conversation with him. There is something so familiar about him. The pictures make me cry, too. Thank you for sharing!

    Reply

    • Nancy H. Vest says

      I’m glad you enjoyed them, Claire. And thanks for commenting. Does Joel Daniel maybe remind you of your grandfather? I’d love to have had a conversation with him, too. 🙂

      Reply

      • Suzan Martin says

        You always have such beautiful pics and in color, great! Your Joe Daniel and my dad could be brother’s. I would like software that would take all of our photos and mix them to make photos of our like 4th GGF that we don’t have or mix our DNA and come up with the photos of them.

        The Martin men all have about the same features. Many have brunette curly hair, right? Of course, we have blondes as well, but the eyes have the same hue. Our Martin’s had blue and green eyes unless their mother had brown eyes. I’ve enjoyed the heritage as well, they’ve improved their site.

        Reply

        • Nancy H. Vest says

          Thanks for commenting, Suzan. A software like that would be wonderful! I’d love to see a photo of your dad. 🙂 Curly brunette hair, yes. I don’t know what color eyes Joel Daniel’s parents had, but one had to be brown and one blue. I say this because his wife (my grandma) had blue-grey eyes, and some of their children (my mom and her siblings) were brown eyed and some were blue eyed. The only way that could happen is if Joel Daniel got dominant brown eyes from one parent and recessive blue eyes from the other. Kind of a simple way to look at it, but it works.

          Reply

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