Photo enhancement

Old family photos often have creases, fading, stains, or have lost their color. The Enhance feature asks OpenAI to do its best restoration of the image, including colorizing black-and-white photos. Every version is kept, so you can refine the result with follow-up instructions without losing earlier attempts.

Turning it on for your family

OpenAI is an outside processor. Before anyone in your family can enhance photos, a family admin has to approve OpenAI under Family Members › Data processors. If you’re an admin, you’ll see a link in the page action menu that takes you there. If you’re an organizer or commenter, you’ll see a message asking you to have an admin enable it.

Enhancing a photo

Open the page action menu on any page and press Enhance. The page sends the current version of the image (with any rotation or crop applied) to OpenAI for restoration and colorization. Processing usually takes 15–45 seconds. You’ll see an “Enhancing…” indicator while it runs.

When the result is ready, it becomes the version the page shows — automatically. No need to click anything first. If there was a previous enhanced version, it’s not destroyed; it drops into the history list and you can switch back to it any time.

On any version in the Enhanced versions list you can:

• Preview — temporarily show this version in the viewer.
• Refine — describe what to change; OpenAI will try again starting from this version. The refined result also auto-applies when it finishes.
• Reject — hide this version. It’s still kept and can be shown again via the history.
• Accept (on an older version) — switch back to that one as the page’s primary. Useful when a newer refinement didn’t turn out as well.

In full-screen view, a small rail on the right lets you jump between Original and each enhanced version to compare them quickly. Whichever one you leave it on becomes what the page shows when you close the viewer.

Refining a result

Press Refine on any enhanced version and a text box opens. Write what you want changed in plain language — for example, “the man in the back row was smoking a cigar in the original” or “make the skin tones warmer”. Press Submit, and a new version appears in the list once OpenAI finishes.

Each refinement is its own version in the list. Refining doesn’t destroy the one you started from — you can go back, refine a different version instead, and keep exploring until you find the one you want to accept.

History of versions

The Enhanced versions section lists every version of the photo that has been produced, in the order it was created. Rejected versions are hidden by default but can be shown with the Show N rejected link; previewing a rejected version works exactly like an active one.

When something goes wrong — for instance, if the server restarts in the middle of a job — the version is marked Failed with an error message. Press Retry to run the same request again, or Dismiss to hide it.

What counts as the “current” photo

The page displays the most recently accepted enhancement by default. An admin can pin a specific version as the primary version from the lineage menu — for example, to bring back an older one. If the pinned version is later rejected, the page falls back to the most recent acceptable version instead.

A note on cost

Each enhancement is a billable call to OpenAI (around four cents per image at medium quality). Refinements cost the same as first-pass enhancements. There is no hard limit, but it’s worth being deliberate: accept the version you’re happy with rather than hitting Enhance repeatedly on the same page.