Bring your old photos back to life
AI repairs scratches, fading, yellowing and blur in under a minute — while keeping your family looking like themselves.
Before
After
Drag the handle to compare. Real output, no retouching.
Three steps. About a minute.
No software, no learning curve, no design skills.
Upload the photo
A scan or even a phone photo of the print works. JPG, PNG or WEBP up to 20 MB.
Choose Subtle or Full
Subtle (default) repairs damage and strictly preserves faces. Full also rebuilds heavily damaged areas.
Compare and download
You get a full-resolution, print-ready file — and the original is always right beside it.
Built differently from the big apps
The most common complaint about popular photo apps: "it doesn't look like my mother anymore." We designed around that.
Faces stay themselves
Subtle mode is the default. It removes damage and refuses to "beautify" — no plastic skin, no invented features, no one looking 20 years younger than they were.
Always side by side
Every result comes with a before/after slider and your original file untouched. You judge the result — we never hide the comparison.
No billing traps
No weekly auto-renew you can't find, no surprise charges. Monthly or yearly, clearly priced, cancel in one click, 7-day refunds.
Print-ready output
Full-resolution files suitable for 8×10 prints and photo books — not a downscaled preview with a watermark.
About a minute
A professional retoucher takes days and charges $25–$75 per photo. AI does the heavy lifting in roughly 20 seconds.
Your photos stay yours
We never use your photos to train models, never sell them, never post them. Files are deleted automatically after 7 days.
Faithful beats flashy
What "conservative" really means: every detail in your restored photo was in the original.
| All‑in‑one photo apps | PhotoUnfade | |
|---|---|---|
| Faces | Auto‑beautify can quietly repaint features | Damage is repaired — faces are not "beautified" |
| B&W photos | Often auto‑colorized with invented colors | Stay black & white — unless you explicitly pick our opt‑in Colorize mode |
| Free tier | Typically a watermarked preview | 3 full‑resolution restorations, no watermark, no signup |
| The comparison | You see the result | Original and result, always side by side |
| Pricing | Credit packs and monthly tiers | $29/year for 1,500 restorations · cancel in one click |
| Focus | 100+ tools for everything | One thing: repairing old family photos |
What it can fix
Fading & yellowing
Recovers tonal range and neutral color cast from decades in a drawer or on a sunlit wall.
Scratches & creases
Fills surface damage from surrounding context — thin scratches and fold marks effectively disappear.
Blur & soft focus
Reconstructs eyes, lips and hair detail in out-of-focus portraits without changing who the person is.
Water & mold damage
Handles staining, tide lines and color bleeding. See our water damage first-aid guide — timing matters.
Dust, spots & grain
Removes speckle and heavy film grain while keeping the photo's period texture intact.
Small tears & gaps
Plausibly reconstructs minor missing areas. For large gaps we'll tell you honestly what's recovery and what's guesswork.
Questions people actually ask
Will it make my relatives look like different people?
Not in Subtle mode, which is the default. Subtle strictly preserves facial features, expression and identity — it only removes damage. Full mode reconstructs missing areas more aggressively, so we show you the original side by side every time and let you choose. Over-beautified faces are the single biggest complaint about the large consumer apps; avoiding that is the reason this tool exists.
Is it really free to start?
Yes — 3 full restorations, full resolution, no watermark, no credit card, and you don't even need an account. Creating a free account also gets you 3 credits and saves your history.
Do I need to install anything?
No. It runs in your phone or computer browser. On a phone you can tap "Add to Home Screen" to install it like an app — same icon, same full-screen experience, no app store needed.
What quality do I need to upload?
The better the input, the better the result. A flatbed scan at 600 dpi is ideal. A phone photo of the print works well too: lay it flat, light it evenly, avoid glare and shadows, and fill the frame with the photo. AI cannot recover detail that was never captured.
Can I print the results?
Yes. Paid results are delivered at full resolution with no watermark, suitable for 8×10 prints, canvases and photo books. Families commonly restore a whole shoebox and print an album.
What happens to my photos?
They're processed for your restoration and automatically deleted after 7 days. We never use them to train AI models, never sell them and never publish them. Details are in our privacy policy.
Can it fix a photo that's badly torn or half missing?
Partly, and we won't pretend otherwise. Small tears and gaps reconstruct well. If roughly a third or more of a face is gone, AI will invent a plausible face rather than recover the real one. For irreplaceable heirlooms in that condition, the best result comes from AI first, then a human retoucher finishing — see our honest comparison.
Can you colorize black-and-white photos?
Yes — Colorize is a separate mode you choose explicitly, and it only appears when your photo is detected as black-and-white. It adds historically plausible color while keeping the exact luminance, structure and faces of the original (in our own pixel tests, structure drift measured 9.7/255, meaning the image geometry is untouched — only color is added). One honest caveat: colors are AI reconstructions from context, so uniform colors, medals and fabric dyes may not match the exact original. Repair itself (Subtle and Full) never colorizes anything — that is a guarantee, not a default we forgot to mention.
Your parents' shoebox won't wait
Photos keep fading, and every year the damage gets harder to reverse. Start with the three faces you most want to see clearly again — it's free.
Restore your first photo free3 free restorations · no credit card · takes about a minute
Guides
How to Digitize Old Photos: Scanning Settings That Actually Matter
The scanning settings that determine whether your digital copies are archival quality or throwaway — DPI, file format, color depth, and the three mistakes that ruin a family photo archive before it starts.
Can You Restore a Photo of a Photo? Yes — Here’s How to Do It Right
A phone snapshot of a framed print, a photocopy, or a picture of a screen can often be restored — if you capture it well. The four failure modes (glare, moiré, tilt, blur), how to avoid them, and what AI can and cannot fix afterward.
How to Fix Scratched Old Photos Without Losing Detail
Surface scuffs, emulsion cracks and negative scratches look alike but repair very differently. How to tell them apart, why you must never polish a print, the scan settings that avoid adding scratches, the correct repair order (damage first, sharpening last), and what AI inpainting measurably can and cannot fix.
Which Photo Damage Can AI Actually Fix? A Measured Answer
AI restoration is strong at reversing fading and yellowing, weaker against heavy stains and deep scratches, and unable to rebuild faces that are mostly gone. We measured all three cases with controlled damage tests — here are the numbers.
Why Remini Makes Family Photos Look Like Strangers (and What to Use Instead)
Generative enhancement apps do not restore faces — they redraw them from a statistical average. Why that happens, what we measured in our own pixel-by-pixel tests, when those tools are still the right choice, and a five-minute test to tell whether any tool will keep a face true.
How Sharpening Actually Works in Photo Restoration (And When It Goes Too Far)
What sharpening really does in a restored photo, with measured calibration data: unsharp masking explained, why our modes gain +29% and +77% acutance with fewer halos than the original scan, why a +101% "sharper" result can mean invented detail, and how to check any tool yourself at 100% zoom.