Do you remember moving portraits from Harry Potter movies? Well, you can do something like that to your old still photos or to any old historical photos which you want to see moving. Deep Nostalgia is a new AI-powered technology from MyHeritage that adds animations like smiles and head tilts to still photos. This new tech has gone viral on social media, with people posting animated portraits of popular figures from the past. In this article, we will tell you how to convert old still photos into videos.
Convert Old Still Photos into Videos
Animate Photos Using Deep Nostalgia
You can sign up for free on the MyHeritage website to use the Deep Nostalgia feature. However, you will be able to use only a limited number of animations unless you purchase a plan.
Here’s how you can animate your photos:
1. Visit myheritage.com/deep-nostalgia to animate your photos.
2. Click on “Upload photo” and choose a file from your computer or phone. Or, you can also drag and drop a photo into the said space.
3. Once you upload a photo, you will be asked to sign up on the MyHeritage site to use the feature. If you already have an account on the site, you can directly log in.
4. When the photo is uploaded, you can select a face to animate if there are several faces. If there is only one face, it will start applying the effect automatically.
5. The animating process takes 10 to 20 seconds.
6. Once the animated video is ready, it will be played immediately.
That’s it! You can now download it in the mp4 format by clicking on the “Download Video” button or directly share it on Facebook, Twitter.
You can also animate any photo that you have already uploaded on MyHeritage by visiting the Family Tree and then the My Photos sections of the site. There select one of your photos, and click the “Animate” button.
Deep Nostalgia feature is also available on MyHeritage’s mobile app, which is available for free on the App Store and Play Store. If you already have the app, you’ll need to update it to use the feature.
Colorize Old Photos
Apart from animating old photos, MyHeritage also offers to colorize old black and white photos. To use this feature:
1. Visit https://www.myheritage.com/incolor and click on “Upload photo” or drag and drop a photo there.
2. It will automatically start colorizing the photo once it is uploaded.
3. After it’s done, you can check the comparison between both black & white and color photos by sliding the bar.
That’s it. You can then download the colorized or comparison photos by clicking on the “download” button on the side.
Apart from animating and colorizing, the website also offers photo enhancing.
How Deep Nostalgia works?
MyHeritage is a genealogy platform that has released this feature called ‘Deep Nostalgia’ that uses video reenactment technology to animate faces in still portraits. As per the website, they have licensed this technology from D-ID, a company that specializes in video reenactment with the use of deep learning.
Deep Nostalgia technology uses many pre-recorded driver videos consisting of gestures of real humans that direct the movements in animation. A driver video is automatically selected for each face based on its orientation, and then it is applied to it.
Also, to achieve optimal results in terms of face smiling & moving, the photos are enhanced before applying the animation using MyHeritage’s Photo Enhancer. The enhancer feature helps in bringing blurry faces into focus and even increases their resolution.
According to MyHeritage, the service has been used by millions of users worldwide, and more than 1 million photos had been animated in the first 48 hours after launch. What do you think of this new technology? Is it fun or is it scary? Tell us in the comments!
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