How to Restore Old Photos (Scan → Clean → AI Repair)
Photo restoration fails in a predictable order: bad scans, over-corrected tone, then AI that redraws faces. Skip all three with this workflow — scan well, do the free fixes locally, and spend your AI credit on damage repair that keeps the era's look.
Quick answer: Scan at 600 dpi in color, do crop and tone fixes free in your browser, then run one AI restoration pass to repair scratches, tears and fading — here it keeps the original era's look. 3 free AI edits a day, no account.
Step 1 — scan it right (or photograph it well)
Flatbed scanner at 600 dpi in color, even for black-and-white originals: color scans keep the stain information the AI needs to separate damage from intent. No scanner? Photograph the print straight-on in daylight, off a matte surface, with the camera parallel to the print — a phone photo of a print beats nothing, but a glared or skewed shot handicaps every later step.
Step 2 — free local cleanup before any AI
Use the local panel on this site (free, never uploads your photo): crop the scanner border and any frame, straighten, then lift contrast and warmth with the sliders. Every fix you make here is deterministic — you choose it, you see it. That leaves the AI pass with one job: physical damage.
Step 3 — one AI pass on damage, not on style
Upload the cleaned scan to the AI Photo Restorer and run it. The instruction repairs scratches, tears, stains and fading while explicitly keeping the period look — no modernized faces, no invented clothing. If the result drifts stylistically, re-run: the free daily allowance makes retries cheap.
What people get wrong
- Restoring from thumbnails: the AI can't rebuild detail that was never captured — always work from the biggest scan you have.
- Running AI passes repeatedly on the same image: each pass re-interprets; one good pass beats four drifting ones.
- Desaturating black-and-white photos before uploading: you're deleting data. Upload in full color.
- Expecting missing pieces to be invented: the restorer repairs damage; it does not fabricate faces that the photo never contained.
Storage after restoration
Save the restored file as a JPEG at quality 90+ for sharing, and keep the original scan untouched — restoration is a layer, not a replacement. The local panel's export controls (format, quality, size) handle this without any extra software.
What this site doesn't do
- We don't archive or store your photos — restoration processes the image and returns it; nothing stays on our servers.
- We don't colorize by default — colorization is available on request in the instruction box, but the default repair keeps the original palette.
- We don't fabricate content that wasn't photographed — no invented faces, backgrounds or limbs.
Frequently Asked Questions
What resolution should I scan at?
Can torn photos with missing pieces be fixed?
How much does it cost?
Will the AI change how my relatives look?
More tools used in this guide
Repair scratched, stained and faded old photos — 3 free AI edits a day, keeps the original era's look instead of modernizing it.
Fix dull, soft or noisy photos in one click — 3 free AI edits a day, plus a free local adjust panel that never uploads your photo.
More guides
When a cutout is the right call, and the honest way to get clean edges — hair included.
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