Yellowed, scratched, or faded family photos always seemed doomed to be forgotten. But with the advance of convolutional neural networks and diffusion models, restoring these images is now within anyone's reach — no need to pay a graphic designer or learn Photoshop.
In this guide, you'll learn about the best AI tools available in 2026 for restoring old photos, with an honest comparison of features, limitations, and who each one is best suited for.
What can AI do to old photos?
Modern photo restoration models can perform several tasks automatically or semi-automatically:
- Remove scratches and tears — the model "fills in" damaged areas based on the surrounding context
- Reduce grain and noise — especially in low-resolution scanned photos
- Increase resolution (upscaling) — from 300px to 1200px while keeping facial details sharp
- Automatic colorization — converting black-and-white to realistic colors
- Exposure and contrast correction — recovering detail in blown-out shadows and highlights
💡 Tip: the better the original scan, the better the results will be. If possible, scan the photo at 600 DPI before processing it with AI.
Comparison of the main AI restoration tools
| Tool | Strengths | Free? | Ideal for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Remini | Facial restoration, mobile app | Partial | Selfies and portraits |
| MyHeritage Photo Enhancer | Colorization + animation | Partial | Family photos |
| Adobe Firefly | Advanced inpainting, scratches | No | Professionals |
| Stable Diffusion (img2img) | Full control, free | Yes | Advanced users |
| Palette.fm | Artistic colorization | Yes | Colorizing B&W |
Remini: the most popular for faces
Remini is probably the best-known tool for restoring photos of people. Its model was trained specifically on faces, which results in impressive improvements to old portraits — recovering eyes, hair, and expressions that seemed lost forever.
The free plan allows a few restorations per day. For heavy use, the paid plan offers unlimited processing. The app is available for Android and iOS, making the process quite convenient.
MyHeritage: the choice for genealogy
MyHeritage Photo Enhancer goes beyond simple restoration: it offers automatic colorization and even an "animation" feature that makes the faces in the photo move. For anyone wanting to preserve family memories, it's one of the best feature combinations available. The colorization result is surprisingly natural, especially for outdoor scenes with natural light.
Stable Diffusion: full power at no cost
For users who want maximum control and don't mind a steeper learning curve, Stable Diffusion with models like RealESRGAN and GFPGAN offers professional-quality results at no cost at all. You can combine upscaling, facial restoration, and colorization in a single workflow.
💡 Tip: after restoring the photo with AI, use ImageTools' Image Compressor to reduce the file size without losing the quality you gained.
How to get even better results
Regardless of the tool you choose, a few practices improve the quality of the final restoration:
- Physically clean the photo before scanning it (use a dry microfiber cloth)
- Scan at high resolution (minimum 600 DPI for 4×6 in photos)
- Save as TIFF or PNG so you don't add JPG compression before processing
- Try more than one tool — each model has different strengths
- Finish by manually adjusting brightness and contrast, if needed
Improve the quality of your restored photo
After restoring, use ImageTools to convert, compress, or resize the image without losing the detail the AI recovered.
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