Using Vivid-Pix RESTORE for Photos

Photo by Sharon Pittaway on Unsplash

​As mentioned in past Blogs, I’ve been on a mission to scan, label and update my family history photos for myself and future generations.  There are several websites that delve into tools as well as magazine articles that we can explore.  This week we’ll check out Vivid-Pix RESTORE to see if this photo editing tool will work for you.  Let’s look.

If you haven’t picked up the most July/August copy of FamilyTree Magazine, you might want to check out the various articles they have related to photo and document preservation as well as scanning tips.  We can all learn more about the best and most effective ways to save these precious family snapshots and documents.  I’ve used some of the tools and here are my thoughts.
                                                                                                                                                                                    
Vivid-Pix RESTORE
I’ve recently purchased this tool to help restore some old, faded photos.  Overall, it does a good job using the easy edit option which gives you nine choices with variations on color and light/dark contrast.  I have a scanner that will automatically save a copy of the original photo with an enhanced copy.  I compared the Vivid-Pix RESTORE photo with the enhanced copy of the scanner and prefer the results of the Vivid-Pix RESTORE photo better.  From what I’ve seen so far, I think that Vivid-Pix RESTORE works especially well with colored photographs.  I have some old Polaroid photos that are fading, and I think this will be perfect for enhancing those.
 
Vivid-Pix RESTORE gives you many variations of the photo in the same color family while the Windows Photo provides options that change the color tone in a straightforward way.  For example, in windows you can choose options like Zeke (golden cast) or Mercury (blue tone) and many others.  Vivid-Pix RESTORE was written with genealogists in mind.  The program automatically copies the original picture and tags the copy with ‘vivid’ so that you keep your original digital photo as is. 
 
Vivid-Pix RESTORE really shines with the metadata.  They make it extremely easy to add rich detail about who is in the picture and any other significant data such as place, date and even memories.  This will be useful for others who receive a copy of the digital print from you or for future generations.  We all know how frustrating it is to have photos (physical or digital) of people that might be an ancestor but without label, we don’t know.  Other programs like Windows Photos stores metadata but I like Vivid-Pix RESTORE for the ease of entering the information.

 Using this program or any program made me wonder if there were any problems with sharing the files with other people, but I haven’t noticed any problems yet.  As I understand it, there are genealogy companies who are spearheading an effort for metadata consistency so that people do not lose this data when using other programs. Others have mentioned is that you can do additional editing with other programs to fine-tune the results.  With more and more tools for photo editing available at reasonable prices, you have many choices.  Check out Sunny Jane Morton’s article ‘Touching Up Your Roots’ in the July/August issue of FamilyTree Magazine.  She compares RESTORE by Vivid-Pix with the colorization tools from MyHeritage.  Overall I’m happy with my purchase and consider it another tool in my arsenal of ways to enhance and preserve my family history photos.

 As you continue to organize and save your precious photos and documents, it’s worth your time to check out the new technologies available to save and fine tune your photos and documents.  Have fun picturing your photos in a new way!