TL;DR / Key Takeaways
- Most photo colorizers either bundle a $119/year genealogy plan or shrink your free result to a thumbnail.
- Here's how to colorize black & white photos faithfully and pay once.
Colorizing an old black & white photo is one of those small magic moments — a grandparent suddenly present in a way the grey original never managed. Which is exactly why the tools that do it are priced to catch you at your most sentimental.
The two traps
MyHeritage In Color does a nice job — but to remove its watermark you have to buy a genealogy plan starting around $119/year, bundled with a family tree you may not want. Palette.fm, the respected pay-once option, sells credits from $49 and cripples its free output to a 500×500 thumbnail you can't actually use. Both are good at color; both make a single photo cost far more than it should.
And then there's free Gemini — with a catch
Yes, free tools like Google's Gemini will colorize a photo. But they're generative — they redraw the image, and in doing so they can invent facial features and change how the person looks. For a fun picture, fine. For your only photo of a relative, a colorizer that invents Grandma's face is the wrong tool. (More on that in why generative colorizers hallucinate.)
The faithful, pay-once option
Stork's AI Photo Colorizer uses DDColor, a dedicated colorization model that is non-generative — it adds realistic color to your real pixels without redrawing the photo, so faces and details stay exactly as they were. Preview free (watermarked), then pay $3.99 once for the full-resolution color file. No account-bundle, no subscription, no thumbnail.
If your photo is also scratched or damaged, Museum-Grade Restoration restores, colorizes and upscales in one pass.
Have an old photo? Colorize one free on Stork →