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AI Tools — Cloud HD

Colorize old photos with AI

A shoebox of black-and-white prints holds people you have only ever seen in grey. Scan one, upload it, and our server hands it back in colour at full resolution — the file exists on our side only for the seconds it takes to process, is deleted on completion, and is never used to train anything.

Colorize an old photoPro · runs on our GPU
Black-and-white photograph of a long-haired tabby cat, before colorization
Sample — processed with ddcolor-modelscope 8565d1f7c686

How it works

  1. Scan the print or photograph it square-on — JPEG, PNG or WebP, up to 25 MB and 24 megapixels.
  2. It goes to our GPU for this one run, and nothing is kept afterwards.
  3. Download the colour version at full resolution. One run of your monthly cloud allowance.

Pro to run it on your photo →

This page is the photo colorizer, tuned to the questions old photographs raise.

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Colorize Old Photos — Free, Fast & Private

The scan matters more than the AI. Colorization can only paint the detail it can see, so the single biggest improvement you can make costs nothing: digitise the print properly. A flatbed scanner at 600 DPI beats a phone photo; a phone photo taken square-on in soft daylight beats one taken at an angle under a ceiling bulb. Crop to the image itself — scanner lids and tablecloths confuse nothing, but they waste the resolution budget — and use the crop tool on your own device before uploading.

Colorize the damage, don’t hide it. Tears, foxing and creases come back in colour, and usually recede visually once the surrounding image reads naturally. What this tool deliberately does not do is invent repairs: nothing is painted over, nothing is “restored” into the frame that the camera never captured. For genealogy and family-history work that restraint is a feature — a colorized-but-honest print, labelled as colorized, keeps its value as a record.

Keep the original. Always. The colorized PNG is a derivative for sharing and framing; the untouched scan is the archive. Store both, name them so the difference is obvious in twenty years, and if the print matters, keep the physical print too. If the scan is small, colorize first and then enlarge the result with the on-device upscaler — colour first gives the upscaler more to work with.

Privacy, because these are usually family faces. This is the one MiniPx tool that runs on a server, and it treats your photo the way you would want a lab to: encrypted in transit, processed once, deleted on completion and in all cases within 24 hours, never used for training. Every other tool on the site — including the crop and upscale steps above — runs entirely on your own device.

How it works

  1. Digitise the print: Scan at 600 DPI, or photograph the print straight-on in even light. Crop away the scanner bed or table before uploading.
  2. Upload to the colorizer: Pick the scanned JPEG, PNG or WebP (up to 25 MB). Pro accounts see the upload button; the file travels encrypted.
  3. Let the model work: DDColor runs on our GPU server — seconds for most scans, up to a minute on a cold start.
  4. Save both versions: Download the colorized PNG and keep it NEXT to the original scan, never instead of it. The original is the archival record.

Frequently asked questions

Will it work on a photo of a photo?
Yes, and this is how most old photos arrive — a phone picture of a print. Shoot straight-on in even daylight, avoid glare on the glossy surface, and crop to the print itself before uploading. A flatbed scan at 600 DPI is better when you have one, but a careful phone capture colorizes well.
Can it fix tears, stains and scratches?
No — colorization adds colour; it does not repair damage. Tears and stains come back in colour, which often makes them less noticeable, but they are still there. Keep repair and colorization as separate decisions: many people find the coloured-but-worn version more honest anyway.
Will the colours be historically accurate?
They will be plausible, not verified. The model has learned what skin, foliage, fabric and sky usually look like, and it applies that knowledge — it cannot know that your grandmother’s dress was actually blue. For family history work, label colorized images as colorized.
Is my family photo kept anywhere?
No. It is uploaded over an encrypted connection for this run only, deleted within 24 hours of completion — and never used to train anything. The input file is gone before your download link is even issued.
What resolution should I scan at?
600 DPI for small prints (up to 10×15 cm), 300 DPI for larger ones. The tool accepts up to 24 megapixels and returns a PNG at the same resolution, so scan once, properly, and keep the original scan file untouched.