1950s and 1960s photos: black and white or early colour

Seaside holidays, the first family car, a christening: photos from these years are often small black and white prints with deckled edges, then, towards the late 1960s, colour prints that have faded. With "Auto colour", the tool colourises the first and keeps the colours of the second, with more contrast and detail.

The Minibon team · Updated on 27 October 2026 · Translation to review

free preview, HD from €1.99

Digitising 1950s–1960s prints

• Deckled edges

  Frame wide to keep the white border if you like it; you can crop it out later in the Studio when ordering a print.

• Glossy paper: watch the glare

  Many prints are glossy. With a phone, tilt the photo slightly or stand with your back to the window to avoid a white patch. Scanning photos with your phone shows the method.

• A whole shoebox?

  Upload up to 20 photos at once. The 10-photo HD pack (€9.99) or the 30-photo pack (€19.99) costs less than buying one by one.

How it works

1. 1. Digitise Scan the prints, or photograph them flat in daylight, without flash.
2. 2. Upload Leave "Auto colour": each photo is colourised only if it is black and white, sepia or almost colourless.
3. 3. Compare Drag the before/after slider on each free preview.
4. 4. Keep Unlock the best ones in HD, or bring them together in a frame or canvas (up to 9 photos).

What the tool does well, and what it misses

• Good: each photo treated on its own Auto mode tells black and white prints from colour ones, so you can upload a mixed batch in one go.
• Good: faces in holiday snaps On small prints, each detected face is rebuilt, even in a small group.
• Worth knowing: cars, dresses, wallpaper When colourised, these colours are imagined: a red car may come out blue.
• Worth knowing: distant faces A figure on a beach or at the end of the garden often has a face too small to be detected.