I’m restoring old photos I have of my late father from back when he was in the army. So far I’ve been scanning them into the computer and opening them with GIMP which is working. Then I’m trying to add color and special effects, with varying degrees of success. I found a tutorial about which is helpful, but mine don’t look as good. Does anyone have advice for someone like me who isn’t an artist?
When I suggested a playraw I meant supplying one of your own pictures so people could have a go at colorizing it. I have ‘hand-colored’ picture in GIMP by using layers and masks to add color to clothing, skin, lips, eyes, background etc. It is a lot of work but sometimes can be done.
However, it looks like you just want to turn a picture sepia based upon your post. The colorize tool would be suitable for this.
One of my first attempts at colouring a photograph in GIMP.
I also slightly softened the lines of the mouth using cage transform because when told to not move for an exposure of several seconds the lips tend to be clenched!
As a result of this photograph, I was asked to write a tutorial. It is labour intensive, but if the image is important perhaps worthwhile.
photo_colouring.pdf.zip (1.5 MB)
I apologize for taking a position inconsistent with the accepted options.
I believe that at present there is no point in playing for hours to
achieve some, also questionable, result (also with invented colors)
“It’s a lot of work, but sometimes it can be done.”
I no longer waste time recommending with the right Prompt to get the job done
For me, he performed in 10 sec. https://gemini.google.com/app
A quick undocumented example:
Further, you can use Uscale AI to zoom in in GIMP
You were just braver than me …I shared something similar via PM… at least using this sort of approach to get a base image and then you can edit it for color casts etc… 
I didn’t make any effort, quickly
1 change the photo to black and white
2 color the picture
More specific recommendations on ferries can be
found online:
"Gemini Prompt for AI editing images and correction.
some examples:
https://zerlo.net/en/blog/what-are-the-best-prompts-for-google-gemini-ai-pho
Even though I wrote the tutorial, I agree to a large extent with your comments!
However, in the case of the photograph above, I hope the colours are fairly accurate. I remember a family conversation with the lady in the photograph where she described the colours (an aunt of mine, nearly 101 when she died).
Generally I am reluctant to colour photographs without some knowledge of the correct colours.
As I wrote in another reply - I didn’t get off with the promt
Just - color the picture
Let’s remember: Whether it matters what color dress Grandma wore 100 years ago.
After all, AI is guessing.
I’m 92 years old now and I can’t remember what colors my clothes were when I was little!
It’s just supposed to be pleasing to the eye.
You can use: AI Image Editor – Edit Photo with Prompt Online Free
I have to confess that AI didn’t do a bad job for free. Here is one image I just uploaded and the result was fast and better than hours spent in FOSS.
A gimp_upscale plug-in that uses AI (artificial intelligence) capabilities to scale up images when editing them in GIMP.
Plug-in source:
gimp_upscale GitHub - Nenotriple/gimp_upscale: Upscale images directly within GIMP (2.10 & 3.0) using the RealESRGAN AI upscaler powered by ncnn and Vulkan for fast, high-quality enhancement of photos, art, and anime.
I have it installed as of 22-07-2025
The plug-in allows you to scale images edited in GIMP from 0.1 to 8 times using the
Real-ESRGAN .
The plug-in uses the power of artificial intelligence to beautifully scale (to high resolution) an image in the layer being edited or in the selected area.
Attention:
If you set the scaling target to “Layer”, the resizing will be done, but if you set the scaling target to “Input Source” on “Selection”, only the quality of the selection image will be improved, without changing the size of the target area.
The features of each model are more or less as follows:
Operation of the plug-in is extremely simple; All you have to do is specify the artificial intelligence model to be used and the zoom factor.
You can also, for example, try to increase the image x2 and then scale down and evaluate the denoise
