Using AI to improve old images of villages

The term “AI” is buzzing around everywhere these days. It can do so much, but it often seems incredibly complicated. Luckily, you can also use AI for relatively simple tasks.

An old book series by Lieve van Ollefen (1749-1816), titled “De Nederlandsche stad- en dorpbeschrijver” (The Dutch Village and City Describer), contains drawings of Dutch villages from the 1790s. Some images from this book can be found online, but they are often of bad quality, often very dark, with little contrast, or of low resolution.

Therefore, I had Ollefen's drawing of the village of Strijen polished by ChatGPT. The original oval, black-and-white image of Strijen had a resolution of 1326 x 1022 pixels and a dpi of 96. The prompt I used was:

“Can you improve upon this image, make it better, more contrast and give it some color? Remove the circle and make it rectangular. Remove the heraldic shield at the bottom. Thanks.”

Original image of Strijen	ChatGPT's image of Strijen

I am very pleased with the result. The only comment I have on the result is that ChatGPT did not extend the dike behind the fence on the right. 

Alas, the result isn't always this good. I tried to improve Ollefen's image of a nearby village, Numansdorp (Buitensluis), with Gemini's Nano Banana. Alas, the resolution of the original image was quite low, and Gemini changed the water behind the houses into land, while creating water in front of the image, where the text used to be.
I also tried to improve Ollefen's image of the village of Ammerstol with a lot of trees in it. Using ChatGPT, I included the question “Can you make the church in the background to the right stand-out a bit more?” The result was a church with a longer nave and a much higher and more pointed tower. It was no longer the church of Ammerstol.

If you have an original picture with sufficient resolution, and ask the right questions, AI can improve your old images of villages.

Sources: ChatGPT.com, Gemini.Google.com/app, nl.Wikipedia.org.