MemoryCherish vs MyHeritage Photo Enhancer: Which One Should Touch Your Family Photos?

Start with the published description, because it tells you exactly which photographs this tool is aimed at. At the time of writing, MyHeritage's help center states the Photo Enhancer is powered by deep learning technology that MyHeritage licensed and integrated into its platform, that it works by upscaling photos to increase their resolution, and that it automatically detects faces in a photo and brings them into focus. Its help center also states that enhancing a photo typically takes 15 to 30 seconds, depending on its size and the number of faces in it.

That is a specific job: make a soft, low-resolution scan bigger and sharper on screen. Genealogy is full of images that were small to begin with, then scanned at a careless setting in 2009, then emailed twice, then screenshotted off a cousin's Facebook post. Faces go mushy through that chain.

Now look at what is not in that description. Upscaling and automatic face focus are what MyHeritage documents. A print with a crease running through somebody's jaw, a corner torn away by a thumbtack, mold that has eaten pigment out of a cheek, or silver mirroring creeping across the emulsion is a different category of problem entirely. Making a damaged photograph larger and sharper makes the damage larger and sharper too.

Repairing the damage is a separate job, and it is the job MemoryCherish does. A real US artist opens your file and rebuilds the missing areas by hand, never AI, at any stage. About four hours goes into an average photograph. The first proof usually reaches you in one to three days. Pricing starts at $38, set by the artist tier you choose rather than by the state of the print, so the most badly damaged photograph in your box costs the same as the cleanest one.

So match the method to the defect in front of you. If the paper is intact and the scan is just soft, that is a resolution problem. If the paper is torn, stained or missing, that is a restoration problem, and it needs a person.

Here is the sentence that should decide this for most people, and it comes from MyHeritage rather than from us. On its own help pages the company states plainly that because both the Photo Enhancer and In Color use deep learning technologies, the result is a “reimagination” of what the original scene may have looked like. That is their word, on their page, about their product. It is an honest disclosure, and it tells you precisely what class of output you are receiving.

Hand restoration begins from the opposite assumption. A MemoryCherish artist recovers what is genuinely present in the print. A damaged cheek gets rebuilt from the undamaged side of the same cheek, from the grain and tone of the surrounding emulsion, from another photograph of the same person if you send one along. When the information truly is not there, we say so rather than filling the space with something convincing. We never invent a face.

For genealogy, that distinction reaches well past aesthetics. Your restored file goes into a tree, gets shared with eleven cousins, prints in a family book, and gets cited in twenty years by somebody who never saw the original print. Whatever you produce today becomes the record. Once a file is circulating, there is no practical way for anyone downstream to mark which pixels came from the photograph and which came from a model.

That is the reason to put a person on it. If the image is going to stand in for the person, recovery is the only defensible choice, and recovery is what you are buying at $38 and up. Free revisions until you are satisfied, so a likeness that reads wrong gets corrected rather than accepted. A 100% money-back guarantee, paid in cash, if we cannot get there. Files that are yours permanently, unwatermarked, with nothing to renew.

Send us a second photograph of the same person if you have one, even a poor one. It is real information about that face, and it is exactly the kind of information a human artist can ask you for and work from, which an automatic process has no way to request.

MyHeritage describes In Color as an automatic photo colorization tool for old family photos, and states that it uses machine-learning technology to generate a full-color image from a black-and-white photo. Its help center states that colorizing a photo typically takes just a few seconds, depending on size and level of detail.

MyHeritage publishes the caveat itself, which is more than most companies bother to do. They disclose that colors in photos colorized with In Color are “simulated by automatic algorithms” and may differ from the real-life colors. Read that twice if your photograph contains a wedding dress, a military uniform, a school jersey, or the car your father still talks about at Thanksgiving.

Hand colorization at MemoryCherish runs on information instead of inference. You tell the artist the uniform was olive drab, that the dress was pale blue rather than white, that Nana's hair went auburn every summer. The artist works to that brief. If the skin tones land wrong, you send it back, because revisions stay free until you are satisfied. Every color in the file is a choice you can question, correct or overrule.

The practical test is whether a living relative is going to look at this. If somebody in the family remembers the dress, the color has to be right, and being right requires a person in the loop who can be told and can be corrected. That is a conversation, not a button, and it is why hand colorization takes an artist a few hours rather than a few seconds.

Restoration and colorization are separate jobs, and they are normally priced separately. If a photograph needs both, say so when you order so the artist plans the file in the right sequence: repair the damage first, then lay color over a surface that is actually whole.

These are different commercial models, so hold them apart rather than lining the numbers up. At the time of writing, MyHeritage states that a free MyHeritage account is required before enhancing or colorizing photos, and that unlimited photo enhancement requires its paid Complete subscription. For color, MyHeritage states unlimited colorization also requires the paid Complete subscription. They also state that non-subscribers will see a MyHeritage logo watermark on the bottom right of their enhanced photos. We are not printing a subscription price here, because we could not confirm one on a MyHeritage page we were able to load, and a remembered number is worse than no number.

MemoryCherish is from $38 per photograph. The figure follows the artist tier you choose and never the state of the print, so an image torn into four pieces costs what a faded one costs at that tier. No subscription. No credit balance. No watermark on anything, ever. No account to maintain after the work is done.

What you keep matters as much as what you pay. Finished files are yours permanently, at print quality, with nothing to renew and no license conditions attached. Print them, share them, put them in a family book, hand them to a cousin in Ohio. The original print stays in your house the whole time, because you send a scan or a decent phone photo and nothing physical ever travels.

And there is a remedy attached to the money, in writing, before you order. Free revisions until you are satisfied. A 100% money-back guarantee paid in cash rather than credit toward something else. That is what $38 buys along with about four hours of a real US artist's attention: not just a file, but a way to fix it if the file is wrong.

It is worth being concrete about what those four hours go into, because from outside the studio all image work looks like the same software.

• Reconstructing missing areas from surviving ones. A shoulder rebuilt from the opposite shoulder. A collar rebuilt from the other side of the collar. Always from what is in the frame.
• Matching film grain across a repair, so the mended area does not read as a smooth plastic patch sitting on top of an old photograph.
• Handling silvering, the metallic sheen that creeps across the emulsion of old prints, which behaves nothing like a scratch.
• Working around mold that has eaten pigment out of the paper rather than sitting on the surface of it.
• Keeping a face recognizable when part of the information is simply gone, and telling you honestly when it is.

None of that is fast, and none of it is a setting. It is judgment, applied by somebody with 37-plus years of combined studio experience behind them, on a photograph that has exactly one copy in the world.

Here is what makes it safe to try. The price is fixed by the tier before anybody opens the file. The first proof usually comes back in one to three days. If it is not right, you say so and revisions continue free until it is. If we still cannot get there, your money comes back in cash. The print never left your house at any point.

Send the damaged print to MemoryCherish. If the paper is torn, creased, stained or moldy, if the face you care about is scratched or partly gone, if the file is headed for a frame, a memorial or a family archive, or if the likeness matters more than the turnaround, this is the work we do and the only work we do. From $38, set by artist tier. About four hours of hand work by real US artists, never AI. First proof usually in one to three days. Free revisions until it is right. Money back in cash if it never is. Files yours permanently, unwatermarked. Original stays home.

MyHeritage's Photo Enhancer is documented as an upscaler with automatic face detection, running in about 15 to 30 seconds, and the company itself states the result is a “reimagination” of what the original scene may have looked like. That is a plain description of a fast automatic process for a soft scan inside a tree, published by the people who built it.

ScanCafe is a digitizing operation. At the time of writing it states it digitizes photos, slides, negatives, film, video tapes and audio, and quotes restoration per photo in tiers by damage severity after an evaluation, with a 50% deposit on approved quotes and media scanned at its Indianapolis facility.

Plenty of researchers work through a whole tree on screen and then pick the three or four photographs that will actually be printed, framed or published. Those three or four are the ones to hand to an artist. That is not indecision, that is triage, and it is how people with four hundred images finish the project with the important faces done properly.

Judge us on the record: more than 400,000 families served, a verified 4.96 out of 5 from over 2,178 reviewers, 37-plus years of combined artist experience, and commissions from museums and historical societies. Then ask us for a sample showing damage like yours, with a face in it. That is the only comparison that settles anything.

Every MyHeritage and ScanCafe figure above is a statement published on those companies' own pages, verified at the time of writing in August 2026. Free-tier allowances and subscription gating change often, so re-check before planning a project around them. If a page will not load or a figure has shifted, trust the live page over this article.

• Photo Enhancer method, automatic face detection, the reimagination disclosure and the 15 to 30 second timing: MyHeritage help center, at https://www.myheritage.com/help/en/articles/12852484-what-is-and-how-do-i-use-the-myheritage-photo-enhancer
• Account requirement, Complete subscription gating and the watermark for non-subscribers: MyHeritage education article, at https://education.myheritage.com/article/enhance-your-family-photos-using-the-myheritage-photo-enhancer/
• In Color description and subscription gating: https://education.myheritage.com/article/automatically-colorize-black-white-photos-with-myheritage-in-color/
• Colorization timing and the simulated-color disclosure: https://www.myheritage.com/help/en/articles/12851631-how-do-i-access-myheritage-in-color
• ScanCafe quoting model, deposit, technician assignment and typical restoration time: https://www.scancafe.com/how/photo-restoration-process

Two deliberate gaps. We do not publish a MyHeritage subscription price, because we could not confirm one on a MyHeritage page we could load. And ScanCafe quotes restoration per photo after an evaluation, so there is no fixed figure of theirs to print. Where a number cannot be confirmed on the company's own page, we would rather leave the space empty than fill it.

Our own numbers are the ones we hold ourselves to on every page: from $38 set by artist tier, about four hours on an average photo, a first proof in about one to three days, free revisions until you are satisfied, a 100% money-back guarantee paid in cash, 37-plus years of combined artist experience, 4.96 out of 5 from 2,178-plus reviews, and more than 400,000 families served.