The MyHeritage Photo Enhancer is one of several photo tools that MyHeritage bundles with its family tree service: it sharpens faces, and its siblings colorize, restore faded color, repair scratches and animate faces. If you're looking for an alternative, the choice comes down to three things: whether you want a subscription, how badly the print is damaged, and whether your photos need to live with a family tree. Below is what each MyHeritage tool does, what it costs as of September 2026, and five alternatives measured against the same facts.
Quick comparison
Prices as of September 2026, in US dollars.
| Tool | Starting paid price | Free option | What it does for old photos | Key limits | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MyHeritage (for reference) | Reimagine app $7.99 a month, or $49.99 a year after a 7-day trial; also in the Complete plan | Free account with a limited number of photo improvements | Sharpens faces, colorizes, restores faded color, repairs scratches and tears, animates faces | Unlimited use needs a subscription; icons mark improved photos | Families building a tree on MyHeritage |
| Remini | Remini Pro costs $9.99 a week on the US App Store; monthly and yearly plans are also sold | Free to download; Google Play lists it as containing ads | Face-focused HD enhancement of old, blurry or scratched photos | A recurring subscription; the iPhone version requires iOS 15 or later | Sharpening faces from a phone |
| Google Photos | Free | Unblur, Magic Eraser and Enhance, no subscription required | Fixes soft focus, dull light and color, and small marks | For most tools, an Android 8.0+ or iOS 18+ phone with at least 3 GB of RAM | A no-cost first pass over your scans |
| Adobe Photoshop | Photoshop alone US$22.99 a month, or US$19.99 a month with Lightroom (Photography plan), both annual | 7-day free trial | Colorize neural filter, plus hand retouching for tears and stains | You do the repair work yourself | Genealogists who want to fix photos by hand |
| ScanMyPhotos (human restorer) | $45.50 per photo, 20-day completion | None | A restoration artist repairs the photo; colorizing is $19.95 extra | Rush service costs $54.50 to $75.50 | Heirlooms and heavy damage |
| Toybox AI | Image Colorizer and Image Unblur currently 75 credits each; top-ups from $4.99 for 500 credits | 20 free credits at signup, not enough for one photo | Colorizes black and white or faded photos, sharpens, fixes damage you describe in words (Pro; results vary), animates a photo (Pro) | The colorizer doesn't repair damage; JPG or PNG up to 10 MB | Paying per photo, no genealogy account |
What the MyHeritage Photo Enhancer and its sister tools do
MyHeritage's photo tools run on its website, in the MyHeritage app and in Reimagine, its photo app for iOS and Android. Every tool keeps your original and creates a separate improved copy.
- Photo Enhancer. MyHeritage describes it as raising a photo's resolution and bringing its faces into focus, and says it works best on photos of several people, where faces tend to be small and blurry. You can view each enhanced face on its own. MyHeritage says an enhancement typically takes 15 to 30 seconds, and that because it's a simulation, results may be inaccurate and, rarely, distorted.
- In Color (the MyHeritage photo colorizer). It colorizes black and white photos, and a separate color restoration mode revives faded color prints, which MyHeritage says suits scans from the 1950s to the 1990s. MyHeritage calls colorization a best guess and color restoration a revival of the original colors.
- Photo Repair. It fixes scratches, tears, holes and stains, with a Gentle model by default and an Extensive model for heavier damage. MyHeritage says repair is technically the first step, though its tools redo the other improvements whatever order you use.
- Deep Nostalgia. It animates one face at a time in a still photo, typically in 10 to 20 seconds per face, and you can download the animation as an MP4. The companion page on animating old family photos covers the alternatives for that job.
Each improved photo gets a small icon in the bottom left corner, a wand for enhancement, a palette for color, a moving ball for animation and a bandage for repair, so that anyone you share it with can tell it from the original.
Why people look beyond MyHeritage
The reasons to look elsewhere are ones you can check on MyHeritage's own help pages.
- The tools sit inside a genealogy product. The Complete plan bundles the photo tools with family tree features, over 33.8 billion historical records and DNA tools. Reimagine is the photo-only app, at $7.99 a month or $49.99 a year, and MyHeritage also sells a Photo subscription that covers every photo tool, its Photo Scanner and 20 LiveMemory animated videos a year.
- The plans overlap. Complete includes the enhancer, In Color and Deep Nostalgia but not the Photo Scanner, which Complete members buy separately. Check which plan covers the tool you need before you pay.
- The free allowance is small. Free accounts get a limited number of photo improvements, and Photo Repair is free for several photos before it needs a Complete subscription.
- Improved copies are marked. MyHeritage adds its icons to every enhanced, colorized, animated or repaired photo. That's deliberate, to separate simulations from originals, and it matters if you want an unmarked copy for a frame.
- Your photos live on your family site. Scans made in Reimagine are saved in the app and on your MyHeritage family site, which suits a family tree more than a plain folder of files.
- The enhancer focuses on faces. If the blur is on a sign, a house or a whole landscape, a tool that sharpens the entire picture may fit better.
Options compared
Remini
Remini is Bending Spoons' photo enhancer, sold mainly as a phone app that also runs in a browser as Remini Web. For old photos, its App Store listing says it repairs old, blurry or scratched pictures and turns them into HD, and it leans toward faces: the same listing advertises "influencer-style output" for selfies. As of September 2026, Remini Pro costs $9.99 a week on the US App Store and the Lite plan $4.99 to $7.99 a week, and the listing also names monthly and yearly subscriptions. Google Play lists the free app as containing ads, and the iPhone version requires iOS 15 or later. Remini fits a quick face fix on a phone for someone who doesn't mind a recurring charge. The Remini alternatives comparison covers the free and desktop options in more detail.
Google Photos
Google Photos costs nothing and makes a sensible first pass over scans that are already on your phone. Since May 15, 2024, Google has offered Photo Unblur, Magic Eraser and Portrait light to every Google Photos user, with no subscription needed. For an old print, the useful tools are Unblur for a soft face, Enhance or AI Enhance for a dull, washed-out tone, and Magic Eraser for a speck you circle. Google's minimum for most editing tools is 3 GB of RAM on Android 8.0 or iOS 18 and up, and Save as copy leaves the original scan untouched. It fits sorting a box of scans into the ones that are fine and the ones that need a stronger tool.
Adobe Photoshop
Photoshop suits a genealogist who wants to do the repair by hand and control every detail. Its Colorize neural filter turns a black and white scan into color and takes focus points for specific areas, while tears, stains and missing corners are fixed with Photoshop's retouching tools. As of September 2026, Photoshop by itself is US$22.99 a month, or US$19.99 a month in the Photography plan that adds Lightroom. Both are annual plans billed monthly, and individual plans start with a 7-day free trial. It fits someone with a large collection who is willing to learn.
A human restoration service
A restoration artist repairs the photo by hand, which is the safest route when faces are damaged. ScanMyPhotos, for example, charges $45.50 per photo with 20-day completion, $54.50 for 10 days or $75.50 for 3 days, plus $19.95 to colorize. Its restoration order form asks for an uploaded image, so the print can stay in your house. A restorer suits one irreplaceable portrait better than a whole album, and the page on what restoration services cost compared with AI works through four services' prices.
Toybox AI
Toybox AI is a set of browser tools that you pay for per photo with credits. Image Colorizer adds color to black and white, grayscale or faded photos and takes a note of up to 500 characters about known colors. Image Unblur sharpens a soft photo by rebuilding plausible detail, so small faces can change slightly, and it isn't an upscaler. On a Pro plan, Smart Editor takes a typed instruction to repair a tear or stain. Results vary, and whatever is missing gets drawn by the AI, so torn photos go through Smart Editor before the colorizer, which adds color only. Video Creator, powered by Google Veo 3.1 and also on Pro, turns a photo into a 4, 6 or 8 second clip. Image Colorizer and Image Unblur each currently cost 75 credits and neither needs a paid plan, and top-ups start at $4.99 for 500 credits. Toybox doesn't currently add watermarks to AI-generated results. It fits someone with a handful of photos who doesn't want a subscription or a family tree account.
Which one should you pick
- You're building a family tree on MyHeritage. Stay with MyHeritage. Improved photos keep the original's title, date, place and tagged people, and a Complete plan covers the photo tools.
- One heirloom portrait with a torn face. Pay a human restorer. Any AI fills a missing face with invented features, while a person can match it to other snapshots you send.
- A shoebox of slightly soft scans and no budget. Start with Google Photos' Unblur and Enhance, then pay only for the photos that still need work.
- Ten photos to colorize and sharpen, no subscription. Running ten photos through both Image Unblur and Image Colorizer in Toybox is 1,500 credits at current prices (10 x 150), about $15 at top-up prices. Colorizing alone is 750 credits. The steps are in how to restore old photos with AI.
- You want to learn restoration yourself. Photoshop's Photography plan gives you the Colorize filter and full manual retouching, with a 7-day trial to see whether it suits you.
Restore and animate a family photo in Toybox
- Make a JPG or PNG copy of the print, 10 MB or smaller, from a 600 ppi scan or a phone scanning app.
- If the print is torn or stained and you're on Pro, repair it first in Smart Editor. If it's soft, run it through Image Unblur and download the result.
- In Image Colorizer, upload the copy, open "More options", type the colors your family remembers into "Notes", and tap "Colorize photo".
- Zoom in on each face and outfit and hold it up against the untouched scan before you keep it.
- On a Pro plan, open Video Creator, add the restored photo under "Start from a photo", and describe a small, gentle movement. A clip currently costs 350 credits and takes a few minutes. Clips come with sound. There's no separate setting for it, so describe the sound you want in your prompt, such as soft room tone with no speech.
Each credit is worth about a cent at top-up prices, which puts a colorized photo near 75 cents and a clip near $3.50. Pro currently starts at $9.99 a month for 1,000 credits (see pricing).