Restore Old Photo — Repair and Colorize Faded Family Pictures

Scan or photograph the print flat in even light and upload it. The photo is read first: a black-and-white or single-tone print is colorized, and a photo that already has color is repaired instead, with noise reduced, detail sharpened and light rebalanced. You can switch the treatment yourself and adjust how far it goes before downloading.

No. The original colors were never recorded, so a colorized result is a plausible version rather than a record of what was actually there. It is well suited to seeing a family photo in color, and it should not be treated as historical evidence of the colors of clothing, vehicles or surroundings.

Restoration reduces grain, dust speckle and softness, and rebalances faded light and color. Deep scratches, tears and missing corners are physical damage to the print and are not reliably rebuilt, so review the result and treat heavy damage as a separate retouching job.

The photo is measured for how much color it carries and how tightly its hues cluster. A black-and-white scan has almost no color, and a sepia or cyanotype print has color but only one tone, so both are set to add color. A photo with a real spread of colors is set to repair instead, so tones that were already correct are not repainted. The Restore tab shows what was chosen and lets you change it.

Lay the print flat and light it evenly, with no glare or reflection across the surface, and fill the frame with the print rather than the album page around it. A larger, sharper scan gives the restoration more to work with; a phone photo taken at an angle in a dim room gives it the least.

No. The file you upload is never altered — the restoration is produced as a separate image that you review and download, so the scan you started from stays exactly as it was.

Yes — Pixoate supports batch and bulk processing. Switch to Batch mode, add up to 60 photos on Premium or 200 on Pro, set your options once, and every photo is processed with the same settings before you download a single ZIP. Bulk processing is a Premium feature; the output uses the same quality and settings as single mode.

Yes — with bulk processing you configure the settings a single time and they apply to every item in the batch — up to 60 photos on Premium or 200 on Pro. There is no need to repeat the setup per item, and Temporary uploaded and generated files are processed securely and deleted automatically.

Almost always one of three things. The file is over the 20 MB free upload limit — Premium takes 50 MB and Pro 120 MB. The format is not one this tool accepts, so check the list shown on the upload panel. Or the file is not really the format its name says: renaming a file does not change what is inside it, and that is the reason a valid-looking image gets refused.

Start from the highest-resolution original you have. A screenshot of a photo, or a copy that has already been compressed and re-shared, gives the tool far less to work with and no setting recovers that. Then, where there is a strength control, come down from the default — most photos need less than the default suggests. Compare against your original at full size before you download.

Restore Old Photo supports free standard use within the published processing allowances. Free downloads are clean — no watermark. No signup is required for standard tool use. Photo effects and AI edits have a web-size limit on Free, with the original-resolution result available through Premium or one credit. Crop, resize, rotate, compress and convert stay full size. Premium supports batches of up to 60 files, with the applicable plan limits shown before processing.

No — Restore Old Photo runs in the browser on desktop and phone. There is nothing to install, no trial to start, and no license to buy before you can see whether it does what you need. Try it on the file you are actually stuck with rather than a sample.

Partly. Improve clarity sharpens soft detail and reduces noise, so a slightly soft print or scan looks clearer. It cannot rebuild detail the print did not hold, and faces blurred by movement stay soft. A larger, flatter scan is the most reliable way to get more out of a blurry photo.

The tool works on a digital copy, so scan the print or photograph it first, then upload the file. It does not scan for you. Once the copy is uploaded, restoration adds color or improves clarity and gives you a new JPG, while your scan stays unchanged.

Colorizing only adds estimated color to a black-and-white image. Restoring reads the photo first and then either adds color or improves clarity, depending on what the print needs. Choose the Photo Colorizer when you want to pick the engine and set how vivid the color looks.

It should not redraw them. Add color transfers only color onto your scan, so facial detail and grain come from the original, and Improve clarity sharpens and rebalances without repainting. Compare faces with the original before you share the result, especially where damage crossed a face.

Yes. Photograph the print flat or choose a scan from your library, then upload it in your phone browser. The restoration runs on the file you upload, and the result downloads to your phone as a JPG.

This tool restores the look of an old print or scan, such as faded color, missing color or softness. It cannot bring back files that were deleted from a phone, card or drive. Recover the file with a data-recovery tool first, then upload the picture here.

Scan or photograph the print, upload it and let the tool read it. A sepia or yellowed single-tone print gets Add color, while a faded color print gets Improve clarity. You can switch the treatment and set Restoration strength, then compare the result with the scan.

Right on this page: upload a scan or phone photo of the print and review the result before you download it. If you are asking where to get old photos restored by hand, a badly torn one-of-a-kind print may still need professional retouching, which this tool does not replace.

Standard use is free and needs no account, within the processing allowances. You see the result on screen before you decide to download it, and the restored copy is a separate JPG, so your scan stays untouched. Premium adds batch mode and the 4× Resolution Boost in the Upscale tab for larger prints.

This tool does the color or clarity step in one run, with no layers or brushes, and leaves your scan untouched so you can compare the result before keeping it. It works on the whole photo and does not retouch damage by hand, so heavy damage may still call for an editor with manual retouching.

Only in part. Add color and Improve clarity deal with color and softness, not with physical damage in the print. For a crack, crease or stain, paint over it in Repair Photo Damage and keep this tool for overall color and clarity.

Either color or clarity. A black-and-white or single-tone print gets estimated color added on top of your scan. A color print gets noise reduced, detail sharpened and light and color rebalanced. Faces, scenery and layout are left as they were in your scan, and the scan itself stays unchanged.

This page does: it reads the photo and then adds color or improves clarity. Tools like it are good at plausible color on black-and-white prints and at cleaning grain and softness. They are not good at rebuilding torn or missing parts, so review faces and keep your original scan.

Scan the print flat, upload it and let the tool choose Add color or Improve clarity, then set Restoration strength. The result looks cleaner, sharper and better balanced, but it will not look new: cracks, stains and missing corners are damage that neither treatment removes.

Yes. A sepia studio portrait is read as a single-tone print and gets Add color by default. If you would rather keep the sepia look, switch to Improve clarity, which sharpens and re-lights it without adding color. Set Restoration strength to Gentle to stay close to the print.