Colorize Black and White Photos
Drop in a black and white photo and the model predicts what color it should be. It is free, unlimited, and runs in your browser, which for this tool matters more than for any other on the site: scanned family photos are about as personal as an image gets, and they never leave your machine. Once it is colorized you can send the result straight into the upscaler for a full restore.
The first run loads the AI model into your browser and stashes it away like an acorn. One-time setup: every later visit starts instantly, even offline.
How to use it
Drop in your scan
Black and white or sepia both work. If your scan is small or soft, colorize first and upscale second: the colorizer works from structure, and upscaling first can invent detail that misleads it.
The model predicts color
It reads the brightness of your photo and predicts only the color, not the detail. We recombine that color with your original brightness at full resolution, so the sharpness and grain of your scan survive completely untouched.
Restore it the rest of the way
One click sends the colorized result into the upscaler without a round trip through your downloads folder. Colorize, then enlarge, then save.
How this runs without a server
Every other tool in this category works the same way: you upload your image, a GPU in a data centre somewhere runs the model, and the result comes back. That architecture is why they all have credits, watermarks and sign-up walls. Someone has to pay for that GPU, and it is metered by the second.
This page does it differently. When you drop in an image, your browser loads the AI model itself and runs it locally. If your browser supports WebGPU, the model runs on your own graphics hardware, which is typically five to sixty times faster than the CPU fallback. If it does not, we fall back to WebAssembly, which is slower but works everywhere.
Two things follow from that, and they are the entire reason this site exists. First, your photo never goes anywhere: it is read into a canvas in your tab and stays in your device's memory until you close it. There is no upload endpoint on this domain to send it to. Second, our cost per image is zero, so the free tier is not a loss-leader with a trapdoor in it. It is just what the thing costs to run, which is nothing.
The model file is cached by your browser after the first download. That is the one wait you have to sit through, and it only happens once per browser. After that the tool works with your network disconnected, which is a decent way to prove to yourself that nothing is being sent.
Checking that for yourself
You do not have to take our word for it, and you should not. Open your browser's developer tools, go to the Network tab, and use the tool. You will see the model coming down. You will not see your image going up, because it never does. Then turn your wifi off: once the model is loaded, the tool keeps working with no network at all, which is not something we could fake. We walk you through both checks here.
Your photo stays on your device.
Not "deleted after 24 hours". Not "encrypted in transit". Never sent. Here is how we prove it.
Frequently asked questions
How accurate are the colors?
Think plausible, not accurate. The model has no way to know your grandmother's dress was green, it predicts what a dress like that usually is. It is reliably good on skin, sky, foliage and wood, and least reliable on clothing and painted objects, exactly where color was arbitrary in real life.
Why did it leave part of my photo grey?
When the model cannot tell what something is, it hedges and predicts very little color rather than guessing loudly and getting it wrong. It happens most on unusual objects, damaged areas, and large flat regions with no texture to go on. Cropping tighter to the subject sometimes gives it enough context to commit.
Can it repair scratches and tears?
Not directly, colorizing is a separate job from repair. But the object remover on this site is the right tool for it: brush over a scratch or a crease and it fills it in. Repair, colorize, upscale is a good order.
Are my family photos private?
Completely. The model is downloaded to your browser and your scan is processed there. We have no server that could receive it even if we wanted one. This is the whole reason the site is built the way it is.
Does colorizing reduce my scan's resolution?
No, and the reason is the nice part of how this works. The model predicts colour only, never detail, and it does that at a fixed working size. We then apply its colour to your original photo at its full size, keeping every bit of your scan's own sharpness and grain. A 4000 pixel scan comes back as a 4000 pixel colour photo.