ANIMATE PHOTOGRAPHS

Black-and-white photographs can make events seem very distant in the past, but digital technology can now refresh such images with a vibrancy that makes them seem like they were only taken yesterday. Such enhanced pictures can be a great talking point, particularly with older members of our families who may have been present at the depicted events.

The ‘Photos’ section of MyHeritage ( myheritage.com) offers a variety of tools to repair old pictures, enhance blurred faces, and colourise monochrome images, creating wonderfully vivid versions of longtreasured pictures within the family album, which you can then host online.

The website also allows you to animate old photographs, giving the illusion of bringing long-departed ancestors back to life, as they smile, nod, blink and turn their heads. While this form of digital sorcery can be a little unnerving and even tear-jerking if it is used on images of people that you or your relations used to know personally, when it is used on much older photographs it’s a brilliant way to stimulate conversation about long-past ancestors from earlier generations.

So if there is a photograph on your wall of a great great grandparent that everybody has been walking past for years, or an old painting depicting an even more distant forebear (yes, it works on paintings too!), why not run it through the MyHeritage software and show it to everyone at your gathering for an unexpected surprise that will certainly get them all talking.