Bring the shoebox of family photos back
Somewhere in a closet is a box of prints that only one person can still name: a wedding from 1958, a porch full of cousins, a soldier in uniform. Half are faded to orange, some are cracked through the middle, and a few have water damage from the basement. You want them scanned, repaired and reprinted before the next reunion, so the people in them get labeled while someone remembers.
Photograph or scan each print in flat light and upload it to Old Photo Restorer. Tears, creases, spots and fading are repaired, and faces are kept as the print shows them rather than replaced. Send a restored black-and-white picture on to Black-and-White Colorizer for a plausible color version, and use Image Upscaler to make the small snapshots big enough for a frame. Keep the restored files; they become the archive.
Made in the Studio with the first tool on the route.
You want
- The only picture of my grandparents' wedding is cracked straight through her face.
- Everything from the seventies has gone orange in the album.
- I'd like the whole box scanned and fixed before the family reunion in October.
- Small square snapshots that need to be big enough for a real frame.
The route
- 1Repair tears, creases and fading
Fixes damage on the scan and evens out the faded tones while keeping faces as the print shows them.
Old Photo Restorer - 2Add color to black-and-white pictures
Gives a plausible color version to hang alongside the original; both are yours to keep.
Black-and-White Colorizer - 3Upscale small snapshots for framing
Brings a 3x3 snapshot up to a size that fills an 8x10 frame without going soft.
Image Upscaler
Good to know
- Can I restore a photo I took with my phone instead of a scan?
- Yes. Lay the print flat under even daylight, avoid glare from a window, and hold the phone straight above it so the edges are square. Fill the frame with the print. A phone picture like this restores well; a proper scan is a little sharper, but it isn't required to get started.
- What if a face is torn or missing part of the picture?
- Old Photo Restorer fills small gaps and cracks across a face by reading what's around them. Large missing areas are filled in plausibly, which means the result is a reconstruction; compare it with the original and with other pictures of the same person. Keep both files so the archive shows what was actually there.
- Do I need to colorize, or can I keep them black and white?
- Keep them however you like. Restoration and colorizing are separate tools, so you can repair a print and stop there. Many families keep the restored black-and-white as the master and make a colorized copy for a frame. Each is a Standard run at 4 credits, and the original scan is never changed.
Tools on this route