Guide
How to restore old photos
Restoring an old print is two jobs, not one. First you make a good digital copy; then you repair the damage. Most disappointing results come from rushing the first part — no tool can recover detail that never made it into the file.
Step 1 — Get a clean digital copy
A phone photo is fine if you take it carefully. A flatbed scan is better. Either way, the goal is an evenly lit, square-on, in-focus copy of the whole print.
- Wipe dust off the print with a dry microfiber cloth. Dust becomes permanent once it is in the file.
- Use indirect daylight near a window. Turn the flash off — it blows out highlights and reflects off glossy prints.
- Hold the phone parallel to the print, not at an angle, and fill the frame. Crop the border afterwards, not while shooting.
- Tap to focus and check the result at full zoom before you move on. Slight blur here cannot be undone later.
- If you scan, use 300–600 dpi for a normal print and save as PNG or maximum-quality JPEG.
- Photograph the print out of its frame and out of any sleeve if you can do it without damage. Glass doubles the reflections.
Step 2 — Pick a repair method
Three approaches, each right for a different situation.
| Method | Best for | Time | Cost | Limits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI restoration tool | Scratches, creases, fading and softness on ordinary family photos | About a minute per photo | A few cents to a couple of dollars per photo | Fills in detail by inference — faces can shift slightly, and heavy damage can be reinvented rather than repaired |
| Photoshop by hand | Photos where every detail must stay literally true, or damage an automatic pass keeps getting wrong | 30 minutes to several hours per photo | A subscription plus your time | Real learning curve; healing, cloning and layer work are not quick skills |
| Paid restoration service | Torn, missing or badly water-damaged prints, and photos that matter enough to want a human decision | Several days to a few weeks | Roughly $25–$150 per photo | Slow and expensive per image; you are trusting someone else with the original or the scan |
What each kind of damage needs
- Scratches, creases and stains
- The most automatable case. Surface damage sits on top of the image, so a tool can rebuild what is underneath from the surrounding area with little guesswork.
- Fading and yellowing
- Colour dyes fade unevenly, so this is a colour correction problem, not a repair problem. Results are usually good, but "original colour" is an estimate — nobody knows what that sweater really looked like.
- Blur and low resolution
- Recoverable only up to a point. Enhancement invents plausible detail; it does not recover detail that was never captured. A blurry face may come back sharp but subtly different.
- Tears and missing corners
- The hardest case, because there is nothing underneath to rebuild from. Small gaps are usually fine; a missing face or half a body is a job for a human retoucher.
- Black-and-white photos
- Colourising is interpretation, not restoration. Treat it as a separate, optional step, and keep the repaired black-and-white version too.
What to expect — and what to keep
- Restoration is reconstruction. Any tool, human or AI, is making informed guesses about missing information.
- Check faces first. If someone no longer looks like themselves, redo it rather than accepting a technically clean result.
- Keep the original print and the untouched scan. A restored copy is a new version, never a replacement.
- Restore one photo before doing a whole box — you will learn more from a single careful pass than from fifty rushed ones.
Try it on one photo
Upload a scan or a phone photo and see what comes back. New accounts get free credits.
Restore a photo