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Before I had a chance to start any chores yesterday, MyHeritage announced the release of Deep Nostalgia™, a new feature that animates the faces in still photos, and I couldn’t tear myself away from my computer.
Deep Nostalgia™ gives family history a fresh new perspective by producing a realistic depiction of how a person could have moved and looked if they were captured on video.
MyHeritage is the only company to offer a complete suite of features for colourizing, restoring, enhancing, and now animating historical photos.
with the MyHeritage In Color tool.
I gasped out loud when I saw saw my great-great-grandfather James Young come to life on my computer screen.
You need to see your ancestors’ faces animated to fully understand. It may take your breath away.
“You’ll have a ‘wow moment’ when you see a treasured family photo come to life with Deep Nostalgia™,” said Gilad Japhet, founder and CEO of MyHeritage. “Seeing our beloved ancestors’ faces come to life in a video simulation lets us imagine how they might have been in reality, and provides a profound new way of connecting to our family history.”
On Facebook yesterday, some people described seeing friends’ old photos brought to life as “amazing.” Others say it was “creepy” and “shocking.” In the case of some of my ancestors, I saw kindness in their animated expressions, which was comforting.
How it works
The technology for animating the faces in photos was licensed by MyHeritage from D-ID, a company that specializes in video reenactment using deep learning. Deep Nostalgia™ uses several pre-recorded driver videos prepared by MyHeritage, which direct the movements in the animation and consist of sequences of real human gestures. A preferred driver is automatically selected for each face based on its orientation, and then seamlessly applied to the photo.
The result is a short, high-quality video animation of an individual face that can smile, blink, and move. To achieve optimal results, the photos are enhanced prior to animation using the MyHeritage Photo Enhancer, which brings blurry and low-resolution faces into focus and increases their resolution.
Deep Nostalgia™ is the newest AI-based photo tool on MyHeritage, and comes on the heels of two highly acclaimed features that the company released last year, the MyHeritage Photo Enhancer and MyHeritage In Color™, which colourizes black and white photos and was recently expanded to also restore the colours in faded colorr photos.
MyHeritage keeps building on that momentum by adding new, cutting-edge tools for historical photos that inspire a fresh appreciation for family history and nostalgic family photos.
Free trial
Deep Nostalgia™ is a freemium feature on MyHeritage. Users can animate several photos for free, regardless of the number of faces in the photo. Beyond that, continued use requires a subscription.
The video animation can easily be shared with family and friends by email or on social media.
What’s next? Looking into the future, perhaps our descendants will wear virtual reality headsets so they can sit and chat with their ancestors. Or perhaps we’ll soon be wearing the headsets.
Learn more about Deep Nostalgia and how to use it in the MyHeritage Blog post.
