Do you have shoeboxes, photo albums, scrapbooks, and folders full of old photographs? Then it’s time to preserve those photos and the memories they contain by restoring them and potentially digitizing them into long-lasting heirlooms. Capture has preserved photographs and other memories for millions of families, and we want to ensure you do the same before they fade or get lost & damaged. That’s why we put together this guide to 19 effective tools for restoring old photos. 

What is Old Photo Restoration?

Photo restoration typically refers to the process of fixing imperfections in old photographs. That’s because your old photos won’t last forever and are bound to start fading and becoming discolored. They can even tear, have water damage, or become lost.

Restoring a photo usually begins by creating a high-quality scan that you can enhance, retouch, or colorize. This gives your memories a like-new appearance while preserving them as long-lasting digital files.

What are Photo Restoration Tools?

Photo restoration tools include a wide range of digital solutions and services used to repair and enhance old photographs. These can be software programs, mobile apps, AI-powered platforms, or professional photo restoration services. 

Modern restoration tools can:

• remove imperfections like stains, dust, and blemishes
• repair tears, scratches, and worn edges
• restore faded colors and improve clarity
• add natural color to black and white photographs
• upscale low-resolution scans with sharper details
• use AI features to animate or enhance old family photos

Professional Photo Restoration Services

Professional photo restoration services are probably the highest-quality method to restore pictures, and there are several options to choose from, including Capture, ScanCafe, and FixThePhoto.

1. ScanCafe

ScanCafe is also a photo scanning service designed to turn your photos into digital copies, but they also offer photo enhancement.

While ScanCafe prices for this additional service can get expensive, starting at $3.00 per original photo, it includes color correction, scratch removal, writing and marking removal, detailed retouching, restoration of creases, water damage, fire damage, and more. 

While many great reviews praise their color correction and photo scanning options, there are also quite a few worrisome ScanCafe complaints. Some customers report inconsistent quality, including visible dust, soft focus, or missed flaws in the final digital images, so results can vary depending on the specific order and level of damage.

2. FixThePhoto

FixThePhoto offers online professional photo editing and retouching starting at $2.50 per image. Their services include color and exposure correction, blemish and red-eye removal, lighting adjustments, and light portrait retouching (skin tone smoothing, basic cleanup, etc.). For more extensive vintage photo restoration, including damage repair, water- or age-related issues, and deep retouching, their restoration service typically costs more (often cited at around $30 per image).

They also offer tons of great reviews and have won several awards, including making the COOL DIGITAL 2022 list of Top Photo Editing Services. However, they have a poor 2.2-star rating on TrustPilot, with complaints pointing out poor quality vintage photo restoration.

3. Forever Studio

Forever Studio offers historical photo restoration and photo enhancement, and has tons of reviews backing up their superb quality results. Whether you need colorization, removal of blemishes, face enhancement, or complete restoration of damaged photos, they can breathe new life into your photographs.

The main downside is that they are more expensive than most other online photo restoration options. Their standard restoration service starts at ≈ US $35 per image; a reasonable entry level for typical scratches, fading, and minor damage. For more complex restoration jobs, heavy discoloration, severe damage repair, or optional colorization / enhanced restoration, the cost may increase depending on the required labor and complexity. 

4. Capture.com

Capture isn’t primarily a photo restoration service, but we can digitize your entire photo collection, including Polaroid pictures, negatives, Kodachrome, slides, photo prints, and much more. This is an important step in the photo restoration process, ensuring the photos are ready to be restored, edited, combined, and shared digitally.

To ensure top-quality restoration, our state-of-the-art equipment delivers JPEG copies of the highest photo quality. In fact, your satisfaction will be guaranteed.

More importantly, our multi-million-dollar facilities monitor and track your precious memories throughout the restoration process, through every hand, and back to you within 30 days or less.

While we don’t offer photo restoration as a standalone service, our photo digitization services come with glare removal, cropping, and color correction in the process. Capture also offers digitization for your old home movies and film reels, creating digital copies that are perfect for video restoration.

No wonder we have over 12 million happy customers saying things like, “I could tell right away this was a HIGH-QUALITY scan!” With over 500 5-star reviews, we’re a top choice for your memories.

AI-Powered Photo Restoration Software

These days, some of the best photo restoration software leverages the power of advanced AI to deliver unprecedented results. Here are some options to consider if that’s what you’re looking for.

5. VanceAI

As the name suggests, VanceAI offers AI-powered restoration packed into easy-to-use software. This includes AI image upscale, AI image sharpener, denoiser, background remover, and more. You can even generate new backgrounds, turn images into cartoons, or create AI artwork out of your old photos.

If you are looking for old photo restoration online for free, VanceAI lets you test many of its tools or download the app at no cost, but you will need to pay for credits to export and save the fully processed images.

6. Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop is one of the most popular AI photo restoration tools for digital photo restoration, offering a complete suite of tools including painting, retouching, cropping, colorization, healing brush, and filters. However, some new users find it a little complex compared to other options.

7. Luminar Neo

Luminar Neo, the successor to Luminar AI, offers a wide array of AI-powered photo-editing features: sky replacement, background or object removal, detail sharpening, noise reduction, exposure/lighting correction, and more.

Because of these capabilities, it can be used for photo restoration or enhancement tasks such as improving faded images, removing blemishes, or patching damaged areas. Luminar Neo is sold under perpetual licenses or subscription-based models, meaning you pay once for ongoing access (or subscribe, depending on the plan).

8. Remini

Remini is one of our favorite AI options because it’s perfect for old photo restoration. That’s because it offers photo repairs, so you can restore damaged photos and enhance faded ones. You can also use it to boost color vibrancy without making the photos look unnatural. 

The app is free to try with limited daily credits, and its paid plans unlock full access. Pricing varies depending on region and plan, but subscriptions generally start around $9–$10 per month, making it more affordable than many professional restoration services.

9. Topaz Photo AI

For $199, you can use Topaz Photo AI, including their suite of apps like Denoise AI, Gigapixel AI, and Sharpen AI. You can use it to create high-definition photos and images, and we find that it’s easier to use than Photoshop.

Online Photo Restoration Tools

To simplify your old photo restoration project, you might want to consider some of these online photo editors and restoration tools.

10. Fotor

Fotor is an all-in-one app that can help you with everything from digitizing photos and negative film to AI face enhancement, old photo colorization, photo sharpening, and super-resolution. It even has an easy-to-use Auto Color Fixer that’s really cool!

11. PicMonkey

This desktop app offers photo editing and design tools, including a clone tool that can paint over scratches to repair damaged old pictures to like-new condition. It works really well and, combined with the editing tools, can make for a fun photo restoration process.

12. MyHeritage In Color

This is one of the easiest-to-use options for colorizing black-and-white photographs, but it can also be used to restore faded photos. While their old photo restoration online tools don’t do much more than that, it’s a great choice if that’s what you’re looking for.

13. Colourise.com

Colourise.com uses AI to colorize photos. While that’s the only type of restoration it can provide, it works pretty well. Even better? It’s 100% free to use, so you might as well give it a shot for your old-fashioned camera photos! Just upload the PNG, JPG, or other digital copies of your old images, and get colorized versions back. 

DIY Photo Restoration Methods

Here are a few more do-it-yourself old photo restoration options that you might want to consider for image restoration.

Using Mobile Apps

There are a few mobile apps for both iPhone and Android that you can use to turn old images into new photos.

14. Google Photos

Google Photos preserves your photos by storing them securely in the cloud. Still, it also offers AI tools that can sharpen blurry photos, erase unwanted objects, and enhance sepia-toned images.

15. Snapseed

If you want to upscale images on your phone, then the Snapseed photo restoration app is a great choice. It’s free and works to identify old photos and use filters to make them clearer. You can use the healing tool to remove imperfections and the other tools to adjust color, contrast, and other adjustments.

16. PhotoDirector

This Microsoft app works on Windows and some mobile devices using AI algorithms, allowing you to denoise, deblur, and image upscale all at the same time. That makes it an exceptionally fast option for removing camera blur, enhancing colors and tone, and removing objects that you don’t want in the restored photo.

Using Physical Restoration Techniques

In addition to digital photo restoration, you might want to consider physical restoration techniques for your old photos, photo slides, and negatives.

17. Cleaning

You can use compressed air or a very soft brush to clean dust and debris off an image. Additionally, you can use a light cleaning liquid to get dried dirt and grime off of photos. We recommend using a cotton swab with a combination of rubbing alcohol and distilled water.

18. Using Archival Pens for Small Touch-Ups

You can purchase archival pens and use them to make small touch-ups for scratches and other damage. However, be careful to ensure it isn’t overly noticeable in the image. In fact, it might be a good idea to digitize the photo first to make sure you save it. Then, you can digitize it again after you restore it.

19. Organizing Photos

To ensure you can always find the photos you’re looking for and keep the memories properly preserved, it’s important to follow best practices for organizing photos. While you can organize them in any way you choose, having a system is important. Some common organizational categories include chronological, by event, by person, by theme, and by type of photo (whether Polaroid, film rolls, print, slide, or negative).

Comparing Tools for Restoring Old Photos: Which is Best for You?

With so many old photo restoration tools available, choosing the right one depends on what matters most to you. Here are the key factors to keep in mind:

• Cost: Free tools are a great place to start, but paid software and professional services usually deliver more consistent, higher-quality results.
• Time: DIY restoration can be time-consuming, especially if you still need to digitize your photos. Services handle the entire process for you.
• Skill Level: Some apps are very beginner-friendly, while advanced software requires more editing experience. AI tools are usually the easiest option.
• Quality: Professional services generally offer the best results, followed by premium desktop software. Cheaper apps can sometimes over-sharpen or over-edit your images.

Choose the Right Path for Your Photo Restoration

Old photo restoration is an important process to ensure you never lose your precious images and that they always look as close to new as possible. We hope that these different options have helped you choose the best solution for you and your memories, whether you prefer a professional service, AI-powered software, a mobile app, or other tools for restoring old photos.

If you want high-quality digitization along with scratch removal and color correction for your old photos, you can rely on Capture’s professional photo scanning services to preserve and enhance your favorite images.