MyHeritage Deep Nostalgia for Web Apps

Animate old photos

MyHeritage Deep Photos is a multimedia service offered by the online genealogy MyHeritage. This app allows you to animate old photos by applying facial movements to them. It uses an AI license from D-ID to create the effect to make your still image move. However, unlike other similar services, it does not require you to record the movement yourself. The app uses pre-recorded driver videos to animate the pictures. Note, however, that it can only animate one face at a time.

How does the Deep Photos app work?

The Deep Photos app brings life to your old pictures. It uses an AI technique called deep learning to animate the faces in photos automatically and create high-quality, realistic video footage. The app uses several drivers, and each comes with a fixed sequence of movement and gestures. It then applies these movements to your still photos, creating a short video with the image moving. The driver guides the movements, so you can see the image blink, smile, and turn their heads.

You can create your account on MyHeritage for free. Once you signed up, you can upload your picture to the server. To animate them, tap the image and click the animation button.  From there, the process is automated. The service will choose the movement that best fits the picture. Since the app is primarily designed for old photos, it will also enhance the image before animating it. However, the free version only allows up to five images. Succeeding use requires a paid account.

The entire animation process takes almost a full minute. Once done, you can download the animated photos as GIFs and share them on your social media profile. The output looks eerily life-like, which some users find to be creepy. Moreover, it also works on ancient statues, even those with blank eyes. However, while the app can animate almost any still photo, it can only handle single headshots. It can only animate faces, so you cannot reanimate pictures of mummies to make them walk.

Blast from the past

All in all, MyHeritage Deep Photos is an animation app that you can try for fun. It allows you to enhance and animate any old photo you may have, so you can see your ancestors come back to life. The process is simple and only takes a few minutes. There are a few limitations to the service, but the output is very realistic.