How to colorize old family photos, step by step
A colorized photo changes how people see a face they've only known in gray. Here's how to go from a shoebox of prints to colorized photos your family will actually look at, without losing anything of the originals.
1. Choose your photos
Start with ten photos you care about: a wedding, a grandparent's portrait, the old house. Early wins keep a big project going. Portraits and outdoor scenes give the most striking results; skies, skin and greenery are what colorization gets right most reliably.
2. Scan them well
Scan prints at 600 dpi (1200 dpi for small ones) in color mode, and keep an untouched TIFF copy. If you only have a phone, use a scanning app and daylight from a window. Our scanning guide has the details, including slides and negatives.
Don't "fix" scans before colorizing: no auto-enhance, no contrast boost, no sharpening. Ungray is trained on faded, grainy originals and does best with the real scan.
3. Colorize
Drop a scan into Ungray. In a second or two you get a before/after slider. Drag it across faces and backgrounds to check the result. The free preview is 1024 pixels wide; the full-resolution version matches your scan, pixel for pixel.
Try the four styles. Natural is the model's estimate, Subtle is gentler (good for formal portraits from the 1900s–1930s), Vivid is brighter, and Warm adds a soft golden tone.
4. Fix what you know
The model can't know that Aunt Helen's dress was emerald, or that the family car was a red Ford. You can. Click Recolor a part of the photo, pick a color, and tap the dress. "Tap to fill" selects the area around your tap that has similar brightness; use the Brush for small or detailed areas. Only the color changes: every fold and shadow stays as photographed.
Ask relatives while you can. A five-minute call ("what color was the house?") is the difference between a guess and a memory.
5. Enlarge small prints
Wallet photos and small snapshots get blurry when printed large. Tick Also enlarge 2× or 4× to colorize and upscale in one step, or use the Upscale tab on photos you've already colorized.
6. Save, label and share
- Keep the originals. Store the colorized version next to the scan, never instead of it.
- Label it. Name files like
1948_wedding_colorized.jpg, and say "colorized" when you share. Colors are an interpretation, and future generations should know which version is the original. - Share the moment. Ungray can make a short reveal video, from black and white to color, sized for phones, or a before/after link that works on any device.
- Print the best ones. A colorized portrait next to the original makes a wonderful gift.
Common questions
Are the colors historically accurate?
They're plausible, not proven. Natural things (sky, skin, trees, water) are usually right; clothes and painted objects are educated guesses. Where you know the real color, recolor it.
Will it change my grandmother's face?
No. Unlike image generators, Ungray doesn't redraw the photo. It keeps the original light and shadow of every pixel and only adds color. Here's why that matters.
What about privacy?
Uploads are deleted automatically after 24 hours, and we never train on your photos. See the privacy policy.