Billy the Kid Like You’ve Never Seen Him: Photo Restorer Revives Rare Portrait of the Wild West Outlaw

Nov 15, 2025

Matt Growcoot

A young man wearing a dark brown hat, a brown jacket, and a gray scarf stands in front of a textured, neutral background. He has light skin, blue eyes, and a relaxed expression. — Photo of Billy the Kid restored, colorized, and upscaled by Nick Harris.

A photo restorer has breathed new life into the only universally accepted portrait of Billy the Kid, giving viewers a clearer image of the Wild West’s most infamous outlaw.

Nick Harris got to work on the tintype photograph that was taken in 1880 in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, and is credited to photographer Ben Wittick. “Using my restoration skills and modern technology, I set myself the challenge of creating the clearest, highest definition portrait of Billy the Kid ever seen before,” Harris tells PetaPixel.

The photo retoucher sourced the image file from Wikipedia and started by cropping it to a head-and-shoulders portrait — the original is full-length.

A vintage, sepia-toned photograph shows a young man standing, dressed in Old West attire with a hat, bandana, jacket, and boots, holding a rifle by his side, against a plain background. The photo has worn, darkened edges. — The original tintype scan.

A black-and-white, old photograph of a young man wearing a dark, wide-brimmed hat and a scarf around his neck, with a neutral expression, looking slightly off-center. The image has a grainy, historical appearance. — The crop Harris made.

“Then, I carefully restored and repaired the surface damage, particularly across his face. I adjusted the tonal balance to enhance clarity and followed by colorizing the image, gradually building up layers of realistic tones,” Harris explains.

But even after all that work, Harris says the photograph “remained grainy and low in detail.” To achieve a high-definition result, he fed the colorized version into an AI upscaling tool Magnific, which “excels in enhancing old, grainy photos while retaining their original likeness,” according to Harris.

A young man with light skin and blue eyes wears a weathered top hat, a scarf, and old-fashioned clothing. The image is colorized and has an antique, vintage appearance. — Before any AI.

“Since upscaling tools often have a tendency to refine facial details more than surrounding areas, I returned to Photoshop to manually retouch Billy the Kid’s hat, clothing, and other fine details for consistency,” Harris explains. “I also added a soft background defocus to give the portrait a contemporary photographic quality.”

A black-and-white historical photo of a man in a hat and scarf is shown beside a modern color recreation of the same man, wearing similar clothing and mimicking the original pose and expression. — Before and after comparison.

For some extra fun, Harris used the AI video generator Kling to make Billy the Kid move and tip his hat. “Seeing him move, almost breathing before your eyes, was both captivating and unsettling. Momentarily humanizing the legendary outlaw and gunfighter of the Old West,” he adds.

The Dedrick Ferrotype

The photo that Harris restored is known as the ‘Dedrick ferrotype’ because Billy’s friend Dan Dedrick took it after the outlaw was killed. Remarkably, the original 2×3-inch tintype survives to this day because it was passed down in the Dedrick family from generation to generation. It was sold to businessman William Koch in 2011 for $2.3 million.

The photo shows Billy the Kid posing with an 1873 Winchester rifle and a holstered Colt revolver on his left side. This wrongly led to people assuming he was left-handed, but the tintype process reverses images and the Kid was actually right-handed.

There are other photos of the famous gunslinger, but they are all debated. Although another tintype showing him playing croquet with members of the Regulators — Billy the Kid’s Wild West posse — is widely believed to be genuine.