Genealogy Photo Restoration & AI Enhancement

GFPGAN, Real-ESRGAN, CodeFormer, MyHeritage, Remini, DeOldify — restore, upscale, colorize, animate old family photos.

The "make grandma's 1910 portrait sharp again" toolkit. AI face restoration crossed a usefulness threshold in 2022; colorization and animation followed. Pair with Photo AI Denoise & Upscale for general workflow tooling, Photo DAM & Library Management for organizing the restored photos, Self-Hosted Photos & Media (Immich/PhotoPrism) for the family library, and Genealogy Document Scanning & HTR for the scanning step.

FOSS face restoration (run locally, free)

★ GFPGAN — Apache 2.0; Tencent ARC. The face-restore model that started the wave. Inputs a degraded face, outputs a clean one. Best on portraits; can over-smooth or invent features. Pair with Real-ESRGAN for full-image upscale.
- https://github.com/TencentARC/GFPGAN
★ CodeFormer — Apache 2.0; better identity preservation than GFPGAN, fewer "plastic skin" artifacts. Tunable fidelity-vs-quality knob. The default in 2026 for serious restoration.
- https://github.com/sczhou/CodeFormer
Real-ESRGAN — BSD; general-photo upscale; pair with GFPGAN/CodeFormer for "upscale + restore faces" workflows. See Photo AI Denoise & Upscale.
GPEN — Tencent face-restore alternative.
VQFR — newer FOSS face-restore; less popular but worth comparing.

★ DeOldify — MIT; the FOSS colorization standard. Two models (Stable / Artistic); reasonable but tends toward sepia-leaning palettes. Run locally or via Colab.
- https://github.com/jantic/DeOldify
DDColor — Apache; newer FOSS; sharper colors than DeOldify in 2024 benchmarks.
iColoriT — research-grade; user-guided colorization (paint a hint).

★ Upscayl — AGPL Electron; Real-ESRGAN one-click GUI. Cross-platform; GPU-accelerated.
chaiNNer — GPL; node-graph image processing; chain GFPGAN + Real-ESRGAN + DeOldify in one pipeline.
CodeFormer-WebUI — local Gradio UI.
GIMP / Photoshop / Affinity Photo — manual restoration with healing / patch / color tools — still essential for the 20% AI can't fix.
Hotpot.ai — paid + small free tier; easy web restoration.

★ MyHeritage Photo Enhancer — paid (Complete plan). Industry-leading restoration + colorization; the commercial gold standard for old family photos in 2026. Drop a 1910 portrait, get a believable color version + animated face.
★ MyHeritage In Color — paid; the colorization specialist; same plan as above.
MyHeritage Deep Nostalgia — paid; "make grandma blink." Culturally controversial — flag: some find it moving, others find it disrespectful. Use with consent of family. Powered by D-ID.
MyHeritage AI Time Machine — paid; reimagine ancestors in different historical periods. Gimmicky.
MyHeritage LiveStory / AI Biographer — paid; LLM-generated narrative biographies from tree facts.
★ Remini — paid + small free tier (mobile-first); best mass-market face restore on iOS/Android. Subscription pricing $5–10/mo.
Topaz Photo AI — paid one-off (~$200) with upgrade fees; see Photo AI Denoise & Upscale. Strong on damaged photo restore plus general denoise/sharpen.
Topaz Gigapixel AI — paid; the upscaling specialist; useful for tiny carte-de-visite scans.
VanceAI — paid + small free; web-based portrait restore + colorize.
Hotpot.ai Restore Photo — paid + free; cheap one-shot restoration.
Pixbim Old Photo Restoration AI — paid one-off Windows; offline.
Palette.fm — paid + small free; colorization specialist by an indie dev; high quality.

Replicate / Fal.ai — paid per-call hosting of GFPGAN, CodeFormer, Real-ESRGAN, DeOldify; useful for batch-restoring an album. See AI / LLM.
Hugging Face Spaces — many models hosted free for occasional use.
Stable Diffusion + ControlNet (img2img with face-swap LoRA) — DIY restoration via Self-Hosted AI / LLM; over-engineered for most cases but flexible.

GIMP — FOSS raster editor; healing brush + clone for tears, water damage, foxing.
Photoshop — paid; Adobe Generative Fill (cloud) handles missing corners brilliantly.
Affinity Photo — paid one-off (~$70); strong manual healing tools.
Krita — FOSS painting tool; complement to AI restoration on heavily damaged photos.

MyHeritage Deep Nostalgia — see above.
D-ID — the underlying API; paid.
Runway / Pika / Kling AI — paid generative video; can animate a face but ethically grayer than Deep Nostalgia.
Honest note: the "make grandma blink" effect lands very differently for different families. Some people find it joyful, some disrespectful. Default to consulting living relatives before sharing.

CodeFormer increasingly default over GFPGAN for FOSS face restore — less identity drift.
MyHeritage's lead in commercial restoration widened with photo-quality improvements + Deep Story narration; subscription value strong if you have boxes of old photos.
Remini mainstream — millions of casual users; introduced grandparents to AI restoration via app stores.
Local GPUs sufficient — an RTX 3060 / Apple Silicon M1+ runs CodeFormer + Real-ESRGAN comfortably; cloud restore optional.
Generative inpainting for tears / missing corners (Photoshop Generative Fill, FLUX inpaint) reduces manual work meaningfully.

Best free face restoration, local: CodeFormer.
Best commercial restoration + colorization, paid: MyHeritage Photo Enhancer (within Complete plan).
Mobile, mass-market, cheap: Remini.
Free local upscale + face combo: Upscayl + GFPGAN/CodeFormer.
Batch-restore an entire album: Replicate API or chaiNNer pipeline.
Manual restore of a precious heirloom: GIMP / Affinity Photo / Photoshop, AI as final polish.
Animation effect: MyHeritage Deep Nostalgia — but consult family first.