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AI Photo Colorizer

Commercial use OK 380+ models No watermark No sign-up needed
Model:
+ GPT-5, Claude, Gemini
Upload a black-and-white or sepia photo. Pick the era so we apply period-correct palette: 1900s photos use muted earth tones, 1970s use saturated Kodachrome warmth, modern uses natural daylight. Free DeOldify on our GPUs.

Drop a B&W or sepia photo to colorize

JPG, PNG, WebP up to 10MB

Preview
~1,000 tokens
Colorized photo
Download

What you can color

Family heritage photos

Wedding portraits from grandparents' era, baby photos of your parents, immigration-era portraits. Pair with /image/face-restore/ for blurry originals.

Historical research

WWII photos, Civil War portraits, 1920s street scenes. Pick the matching era preset for period-correct palette. Color is interpretive — confirm with historical sources.

B&W video colorization prep

Colorize keyframes, use as reference for full-clip colorization in DaVinci Resolve. Faster than per-frame manual color work.

Museum / archive digitization

Local-history society projects, school archive scans, library special-collections digitization. Always note 'colorized for visualization' in captions — original is the source of truth.

Memorial / gift prints

Anniversary frames, funeral programs, birthday surprises with restored childhood photos. Use Premium Kontext Pro for sharper skin tones.

Content & social posts

Reddit r/Colorization-style posts, Instagram historical accounts, TikTok before/after reels. Side-by-side B&W vs color is high-engagement content.

Free.ai Colorizer vs Palette.fm / MyHeritage / DeOldify desktop

FeatureFree.aiPalette.fmMyHeritage In ColorDeOldify (self)
Price$0 (daily pool) or premium tokens$15/mo$129/yrFree / GPU required
Era presets7 built-in21Auto onlyAuto only
Install requiredNoNoNoPython + GPU
WatermarkNoneNoneNoneNone
Premium AI optionYesNoNoNo
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Result
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Want better results? Premium models (GPT-5, Claude, Gemini) deliver higher quality. View Plans

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Colorize black and white photos with AI for free.

How to Use AI Photo Colorizer

1
Enter your input

Type text, upload a file, or describe what you want. No account needed.

2
Click generate

Our AI processes your request in seconds using the best open-source models.

3
Download & share

Download, copy, or share your result. Free for personal and commercial use.

Use this tool via API

Automate this tool from your own code. OpenAI-compatible REST endpoint, Bearer-token auth, no extra SDK required. Token costs match the web interface.

API Documentation Get API Key 
curl -X POST https://api.free.ai/v1/image/generate/ \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk-free-..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"prompt": "A sunset over mountains", "model": "sdxl"}'

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AI Photo Colorizer — FAQ

An AI colorizer that adds plausible color to black-and-white or sepia photos. Era presets (Victorian / Early 1900s / 1940s Kodachrome / 1970s Kodak gold / 1980s vivid / Modern natural) drive period-correct palette so a 1920s portrait gets muted earth tones rather than digital saturation. Free DeOldify on our GPUs; premium FLUX Kontext Pro / Seedream 4 Edit for sharper skin tones and more accurate historical color reasoning.

Color is interpretive — the AI guesses what was likely based on training data. Skin tones, sky, foliage are usually plausible. Specific period clothing colors (a particular military uniform shade, a known dress in a portrait) may be wrong. For historical research, treat the colorized version as visualization aid — never as primary evidence. Always note "colorized" in captions and credit lines.

Palette.fm ($15/mo subscription) and MyHeritage In Color ($129/yr) are the direct subscription competitors. Both produce solid results. Free.ai gives you the same DeOldify free tier as the desktop OSS version, plus 7 era presets and a premium FLUX Kontext path. No subscription, browser-based, no watermark.

DeOldify (free) handles faces reasonably well but can over-saturate skin tones. Premium Kontext Pro / Seedream 4 Edit do face-aware coloring — better skin tones, more natural lip color, more accurate hair color. For ancestral portraits where likeness matters, use premium and adjust the saturation slider toward Subtle.

It colorizes individual frames. For full B&W film colorization, extract keyframes, colorize them here, then use them as reference in DaVinci Resolve / Adobe Premiere for per-frame color tracking. Direct full-video colorization is not in AI Photo Colorizer.

Sepia photos work. The AI strips the sepia cast and applies fresh color. Era presets (especially Victorian and Early 1900s) account for the underlying tonal warmth of period prints.

Not from AI Photo Colorizer directly — it is a one-shot colorization. For per-region color adjustment, run the colorized output through /image/inpainting/ with prompts like "change shirt color to navy blue, keep everything else exactly the same".

Switch saturation to Subtle. Pick the era preset matching the photo period (1940s + Subtle gives understated Kodachrome look; Modern + Rich gives Instagram-saturated look). DeOldify free is more aggressive than Kontext Pro premium — try premium for restrained results.

Yes — restored versions of photos you own / are licensed to use are yours. Always credit "colorized by AI" when publishing. Underlying models are commercially licensed.

No — it expects photographic input. For coloring line art with AI, use /image/style-transfer/ or /image/inpainting/ instead.

Up to 10MB upload. Resolution scales — high-resolution input (2000+ px wide) produces a high-resolution colorized output. Premium FLUX Kontext Pro handles up to ~2 megapixels well; for very large prints, downsize the input before colorizing, then upscale the result via /image/upscaler/.

Yes — POST multipart to /v1/image/edit/ with image file, prompt, tool:"image-colorize", operation:"edit" (premium) or "colorize" (free), and optional model. Bearer auth, monthly limits. /api/ has the curl example.

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