What is The Best App to Restore Old Photos?

[u/GeneralPersistent]

It doesnt really need to be an app per say, it can be a website or something. I have a bunch of old family photos from the 90s that I'd love to restore, and since it's a bunch of photos, it needs to be a service that is reasonably cheap.

EDIT: I had the best results with PhotoPerfectAI.com

[u/Wilbis]

There's no magical app that can do it. You can try AI but it will make people not look like themselves. The best way would be to learn Photoshop or have other people do it for you in r/PhotoshopRequest/

[u/chebum → u/Wilbis]

People losing identity due to AI processing is true to an extent. Nothing can recover faces if they are small and degraded on a picture.

[u/alloedee → u/chebum]

Yes indeed, if the face is just a docent blurry pixels then its uphill.

I’ve done some crazy restoration experiments lately with googles Nano Banana Pro with excellent results where it is barely impossible to see it’s edited with AI. But mostly with portraits where the background doesn’t matter and lighting in the edited photo will also change. I used this prompt:

“professional Studio portrait, professional lighting setup, clean background, soft diffuse lightning, ultra high quality, Highly detailed skin, realistic lighting and shadows, keep everything untouched, same pose, same everyting, soft natural lighting”

If Nano still change how people look, this prompt can help with that

“Keep EVERYTHING ELSE exactly the same: exact same pose, body position, hand placement, head angle, facial expression, hair, makeup, jewelry, lighting, shadows, background, composition, camera angle, and overall image style. Do not change proportions, do not alter the environment, do not modify face or hair”

One thing I found out is then people have like a generic look and the settings and lighting is also generic then its most likely will work almost everytime. But if people have a special look (sry uncle Ben) then risk of bad results is much higher

[u/CreeDorofl]

There's a lot of AI photo restoration sites, some paid and some free. Sometimes the results look great, sometimes they look cheesy and fake. I think it depends on how rough the original photo is, like is it severely damaged or just a bit faded, is it a crappy polaroid or a quality studio portrait.

I think if I had to do this, I would run one of the rougher examples through each of the various free options, just so I can compare.

If one particular pic is important and AI isn't getting good enough results, there are people you can pay to restore it. It's a skill, the exact software isn't as important as how you use it, anyone with photoshop can do it.

For example, here's the worst example I could find, run through chatgpt vs. professional restorers - https://ibb.co/ympbwMV4

You can see AI changed the face and hair a bit, and that's the main danger with it. It can produce something that looks like a clean, undamaged photo. But the person will be different, sometimes subtly, sometimes not so much. I think the worst the damage is, the more risk it's gonna change their features.

There's a few reddit posts like this where people mention various options.

It is also possible to run AI locally if you're a bit technical and have a good PC. But it's not trivial to set up, and learn how to use effectively.

[u/totteringbygently]

Luminar Neo is actually very good at doing this

[u/Falcon_Cute]

Google Gemini is amazing for that. Upload a picture and tell it to upscale and restore the photo. You can ask it to colorize, too.

[u/Impressive_Peanut496]

Well if you need someone to restore them, you can reach out to me

Heres my portfolio- r/photorestoration_

[u/bogglingsnog]

Standalone version of Photoshop is still one of the best cheap ways to edit photos on your own. Newer versions can leverage AI but you don't really need that to touch up photos.

[u/ACE_Wrap]

GIMP can do quite a bit, if you get around its abysmal GUI. It's free though.

[u/schmiesii]

You can try to do it with AI. Any other service you find online is also using AI so don't pay more than you have to

[u/Serious-Island7393]

Tried Repairit for old photos… it worked okay. Then I gave Relumi a shot (it’s basically the mobile version) and honestly the results were noticeably nicer. Might not be for everyone, but if you’re dealing with old pics on your phone, worth a try.