Skip to content
Account

Restore an old photo

3 credits per imageDeleted after 2 hAlso as Colourise

Free account · 20 free credits. Sign in or sign up

Opening…

Drop a picture here

PNG, JPG or WebP · one file

or paste it here (Ctrl+V)

Nothing is uploaded until you press Restore.

A recorded run of the shipped code on a synthetic image.

Before and after

A damaged print in, a clean photo out.

Old photo
An old sepia print of a city street, faded and stained, with scratches, dust, a fold and a torn corner.(opens the sample image in a new tab)

1200 × 900 px · sepia JPEG scratches, dust, a crease, a torn corner, faded

Restored
The old street print restored: the scratches, dust and fold gone and the colours revived.(opens the recorded result in a new tab)

scratches, dust and the crease removed contrast and colour brought back, sharpened and enlarged

What this tool does

Drop in a scan or a phone photo of an old print — JPG, PNG or WebP, up to 12 MB — and you see it straight away. Three switches say what to fix: scratches, dust, creases and torn corners; faded, yellowed colours; and, if you tick it, colour for a black and white or sepia photo. Press Restore and an AI photo-restoration model repairs the picture, sharpens it and makes it larger (up to 4096 pixels on the long side — under More options you can skip that). The result appears next to the original with a slider to compare them. It costs 3 credits, shown on the button before you run it, and nothing is charged if the run fails. The photo goes to our AI provider for this one run; our copy and the result are deleted after two hours, and the download is marked as AI-edited in its metadata.

If this image shows a real person, the result is an AI-manipulated image of that person. It is labelled as AI-edited in its metadata, and you are responsible for having their consent.

What happens to your file

Deleted from our servers after 2 hours. We do not train AI on your files, and the terms of our AI providers do not allow them to; they may keep request logs for up to 55 days, longer for a request they flag for abuse.

Uploads and outputs are deleted after 2 hours, whether or not you download them. Provider request logs are kept for at most 55 days. Details on the privacy page.

Questions

What can AI photo restoration fix?

Scratches, dust and specks, creases and folds, small tears and missing corners, fading, yellowing and a soft, blurry look. It works best on prints that are damaged but still mostly there. It cannot bring back something that is completely gone — a face torn away, or a picture so faded that nothing is left — and what it fills in there is its own invention.

Will it change the faces in my photo?

It can, a little. In a damaged photo the AI rebuilds faces from what is left, so a restored face is its best reading of the damage, not a recovery of the person: the eyes, mouth or hair can come out slightly different from the original. Always compare the two with the slider before you keep the result, and keep your original scan.

Can it colourise a black and white photo?

Yes. Tick "Add colour" and the photo is restored and then coloured in the same run, for the same 3 credits. The colours are the AI's best guess — it cannot know what colour a coat or a wall really was. The colourise page is set up for exactly that: /tools/restore-old-photo/colourise.

What does it cost, and do I need an account?

3 credits a photo, with or without colour. You need a free account, because the restoration runs on an AI model on our servers; new accounts get 20 credits. The price is on the button before you run it, and nothing is charged if the run fails.

What happens to my photo, and is the result marked as AI-edited?

The photo is sent to our AI provider for this one run and is not kept there: fal.ai is asked not to store it, and Replicate, used only if fal is unavailable, deletes it within an hour. Our copy and the result are deleted after two hours, so download it soon. No visible watermark is added; the download carries metadata (content credentials, XMP and a provenance id) saying it was edited with AI.

Photos & pictures