Photo restoration is the process of improving the quality of old photos that are either damaged or have faded naturally using digital restoration tools.
Tools, we say. There are plenty of AI tools available in the market that help you restore old photos to perfection.
In this article, we’ll talk about the best AI photo restoration tools and how they help you cherish memories.
Let’s start with the basics.
What Is a Photo Restoration Tool?
A photo restoration tool is an advanced software designed to repair, enhance, and restore damaged photos to their original state.
They help remove scratches, blemishes, and dust, as well as correct color, brightness, and contrast levels to revive the original appearance of photographs.
Doesn’t matter whether it’s fire, water, or time that damages your memories; these AI-powered photo restoration tools save the day.
How Does It Differ From a Photo Repair Tool?
Photo Repair Tool and Photo Restoration Tool both are two different chapters of the same book.
You see, repair is the art of fixing something until it’s good to work. Restoration, on the other hand, includes techniques to bring a damaged object into its original state.
A photo repair tool focuses on fixing minor issues or imperfections in a photograph. It addresses common problems like scratches, dust, stains, or small tears.
Common features include clone stamping, spot healing, or content-aware fill to replace damaged or missing image portions with nearby pixels or patterns.
A photo restoration tool, on the other hand, is designed to tackle more significant issues and restore old, damaged, or heavily degraded photographs. It aims to revive the overall quality and appearance of the image, often involving complex algorithms and techniques.
Common features include color correction, noise reduction, sharpening, and the ability to repair major cracks, creases, or large missing sections of the photo.
Some tools may even offer options to enhance faded colors or restore the original tone and contrast.
Benefits of Photo Restoration Tool
Restore Damaged Photos
Photo restoration tools are excellent for restoring decade-old photographs. Whether it’s scratches, tears, or creases in photographs, these tools have specialized features to ace the 3Rs of restoration.
- Revive faded colors
- Remove imperfection
- Restore detail
Moreover, old photos are accustomed to physical damage. But no worries, our friend here has tools and techniques to repair these damages digitally, allowing you to restore the photo without further harming the original copy.
Store and Share Digitally
With photo restoration tools, you can store old physical photographs in digital format and even share them on the fly. Meaning you scan and upload the physical copy to the software, and it automatically creates a digital file.
The digital file can then be easily shared with family and friends or even preserved in online albums or cloud storage. And, of course, the ability to create backups to protect against further deterioration or loss.
Saves Time
Imagine the 90s when you had to take photos at a local digital studio, then wait for ‘n’ a number of days to get it back. Even though chances are, the corrected version wouldn’t be as expected.
With photo restoration tools, you save hours of hard work. Its smart features allow you to edit damaged photos within a few clicks. Best of all, you can download the restored photo in various digital formats.
Reconstruction of the Missing Portion
Oftentimes, old photographs have missing sections due to damage or wear and tear.
With photo restoration software, you get handy tools like content-aware fill or cloning to rebuild these missing areas.
Generally, these tools use existing image data to blend lagging areas with the rest of the photo seamlessly. Thus, transforming the image into new.
Hotpot
Hotpot is a lightweight software that offers a suite of AI tools to create amazing graphics, pictures, and writing. Its AI-enabled photo restoration tool helps repair both black-and-white and colored photographs.
The software automatically performs all the restoration steps, including scratch removal, face enhancement, and color sharpening.
If you’re a developer or coder looking to integrate Hotpot, you can easily do it via Hotpot API or self-hosted containers.
Hotpot’s API and no-code bulk creation are subject to payment. You can connect with their sales team for pricing.
Besides, Hotpot doesn’t save pictures without user permission. The software only retains images for as long as necessary to run through machine-learning models and then Wush! 😶🌫️
Fotor
Fotor AI-powered photo restoration tool enables you to restore old photos within minutes without any design expertise required.
It offers in-built tools like object remover, photo enhancer, and blur remover to restore photos to the best quality.
The object remover helps get rid of any scratches or spots, while the blur remover fixes blurry patches to enhance the resolution of your pictures.
Furthermore, the built-in light enhancement tool also allows automated brightness adjustment of your images for the best look. Besides, you can use Fotor on the web or download the app on your mobile devices.
Fotor is a free-to-use tool. However, you can try its premium services to get the best out of it.
Neural.love
Founded in 2020 – Neural.love provides an online AI-powered audio, video, and image editing and enhancement platform. Its AI photo restoration tool helps repair and restore damaged images for free.
Neural.love focuses on four key aspects to restore your age-old memories:
- Repair damages and scratches
- Enhance details
- Fix colors issues
- Reduce blur by making images crisper
Moreover, its intuitive drag-and-drop function makes photo restoration a bliss. Simply drag and drop the image into the tool, and AI will restore your old photos by removing scratches, dust, and tears.
In addition to removing imperfections, AI photo restoration could also involve color correction and face enhancement.
Best of all, you don’t need to install any app. It’s all on the cloud – from photo upload to editing and download, you can do it all from Novel. Love’s web app.
PhotoGlory
PhotoGlory is a powerful photo restoration software for Windows OS. Whether you are new to photo restoration or a pro in the field, the software offers an intuitive and semi-automatic workflow, delivering stunning results without much manual work.
Using PhotoGlory, you can do some amazing things, like:
- Restore photo quality
- Add colors to B&W pictures
- Color-correct old pictures
- Add stylish labels and date stamps
Additionally, you get 100s of built-in filters and effects to bring your old picture back to the era. The basic requirement to run PhotoGlory includes Windows 7 or above, CPU 1GHz or faster, RAM 4GB or more, and Hard drive space min 500 MB.
LinangData
LinangData is a treasure trove of productivity tools. The software offers web-based productivity utilities, like Calculators, Formatters (for JSON, XML, and HTML), Testers, Color pickers, and more.
The best part, you can easily use most of the tools via Chrome and Edge extensions.
One of which is its AI-powered photo restoration software. The tool is free to use and is mainly intended for restoring faces in images, but it will also improve backgrounds.
The tool uses Generative Facial Prior (GFP) – a machine-learning model designed to generate high-quality facial images from low-quality inputs.
Likewise, LinangData uses the same model to enhance the uploaded image background. Be it old, damaged, blurred, or low-quality photographs – the tool can restore them all!
Luminar
Luminar, is an easy-to-use editor with powerful AI capabilities. Its AI-powered photo restoration feature helps remove the most severe damages, including ink patches, stains, dirt, and curls.
Additionally, Lumiar offers a chunk of other features to help with the complete restoration of old images, such as:
- Erase: Simply paint over the problem area, and let the tool analyze the neighboring pixels and generate a texture similar to them
- Clone Stamp: Pick an area of the image to clone and place it over the spot you want to remove; use it to remove unwanted objects or modify existing ones
- Enhance Faded Photos: Use Accent AI technology to automatically fix exposure, contrast, tone, details, and color
Skylum also hosts a marketplace for Luminar-related digital assets like overlays, textures, and more.
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is regarded as an elite photo editing software. It hosts some remarkable photo editing and enhancement features, enough for newbies to edit like a pro.
Luckily, you can restructure or repair old images using photo restoration in Adobe Photoshop. It offers tools like filters, spot-healing brushes, cloning stamps, and more to transform vintage photos to their former glory.
One of its sought-after features is Auto Color. Using this, you create colors for the image based on what’s already there. Hereby, filling any discolored portion, scratches, or blur.
Lastly, you can save your image as a JPEG, TIFF, PNG, or other image file format of your choice.
PhotoBooth
PhotoBooth’s state-of-the-art photo restoration tech helps restore vintage photographs to perfection. Simply drag and drop the photograph into the software, and let PhotoBooth reverse-restore and enhance the image for you.
The software will correct all color details, remove scratches, and handle all flawed details like pixelated or blurred sections and more.
PhotoBooth is trusted by over 10,000+ users for photo editing and restoration. Best of all, the tool is free to use and is capable of repairing damaged photos within 3 clicks.
Media.io
Media.io is a popular AI-powered photo restoration tool among marketers and businesses. It’s trusted by over 10 Million users from over 100 countries. Its clientele includes some top media companies like Oberlo, Geekflare, Livewire, and more.
The software is completely web-based and doesn’t require you to download any app. You can simply scan and upload your old photographs, and its algorithms will transform them back to fresh-looking images within a click.
Lastly, Media.io uses cutting-edge tech to upscale JPEG pictures to 4K (more than 200 formats supported)
Instasize
Boasting an array of photo filters, an advanced editor, and a staggering 200+ color correction options, Instasize empowers you to transform your age-old pictures effortlessly.
With its versatile AI toolkit, you can restore and enhance old photos. The toolkit includes tools for photo resizing, background removal, and refining facial features with precision.
Instasize can be easily used on the web, or you can download the app on mobile devices. The platform is available on both the app store and the play store.
Phowd
Phowd, established in 2013, is a trailblazing AI-powered photo restoration tool that caters to 50k+ users, including digital retouchers and photographers.
It offers a suite of features designed to meet the needs of different categories, including weddings, fashion, real estate, old photo restoration, and many more.
The platform excels in background removal and is ideal for basic image fixes such as color correction, exposure adjustments, and noise reduction.
Phowd’s user-friendly interface and advanced AI algorithms make it hassle-free to restore old photos to their former glory and preserve precious memories.
Remini
Remini is an exceptional photo restoration tool that smoothly integrates AI, allowing simple incorporation into user workflows. This app utilizes HD technology to achieve impeccable precision.
Remini’s AI-powered photo restorer excels in preserving and revitalizing historical photographs. The tool is capable of eliminating blurriness and photo grains. Moreover, it discloses hidden details through its fantastic AI algorithms.
Even if you wish to integrate the tool into your product or app, you can do it easily with Remini’s API and a few lines of code.
VanceAI
VanceAI is a Windows-only photo restoration software with a user-friendly interface and simple drag-and-drop editing.
Users can smoothly restore and improve their images with an array of features; the best one includes automated image repairing and effectively eradicating imperfections like marks, blemishes, and other undesirable elements.
Again, it also provides robust AI-driven functions to elevate image quality and purify facial attributes. VanceAI places utmost importance on data security, ensuring that uploaded pictures are promptly deleted within a 24-hour time frame after processing.
Wondershare Repairit– a versatile AI-powered photo restoration solution that brings crystal-clear clarity to vintage and contemporary images.
By utilizing top-notch AI technology, the tool transforms blurry photos and low-light captures into high-quality digital images in a click. Its AI-powered photo restoration enhances color and expertly removes imperfections to ensure outstanding results.
Moreover, the platform ensures complete flexibility and compatibility by supporting six distinct file formats, including JPG, GIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP, and WebP.
Wondershare extends its functionality to online file repair, presenting an integrated and reliable answer to all photography and video restoration needs.
Wrapping Up
We never thought restoring old photos could become this easy. Thanks to AI and technology for staying put with us.
The tools mentioned above are excellent if you’re willing to restore something personal or charge people for restoration services.
Any way around, the tools are highly compatible and easy to use. And best of all, most tools don’t even require you to create an account.
You may also explore some best photo editing apps to edit your photos on the go.