How to Restore Old Photos with AI: A Complete Guide

Old photos fade, scratch, and tear. Until recently, restoring them required a professional photo restorer — expensive, slow, and hard to find. AI changes that. You can now restore old photos in seconds, for free.

What AI photo restoration does

AI photo restoration uses machine learning models to:

• Remove scratches — eliminates lines, marks, and surface damage
• Restore faded colors — brings back original colors from faded prints
• Repair tears — reconstructs missing parts of the image
• Reduce noise — removes grain and artifacts from old film
• Sharpen details — enhances blurry or soft areas

How to restore a photo with Crevisto

1. Visit the Photo Restoration tool

2. Upload your old photo (JPG, PNG, or WebP)

3. Click "Restore"

4. Download the restored image

That's it. No software to install, no skills required.

Using the CLI

Prefer the terminal? Install the Crevisto CLI:

curl -fsSL https://crevisto.com/install.sh | sh
crevisto trial
crevisto generate photo-restoration --input photo=./old-photo.jpg --output ./restored.webp

Batch processing

Have a folder of old photos? The CLI makes batch processing easy:

for photo in ./old-photos/*.jpg; do
  crevisto generate photo-restoration --input photo="$photo" --output "./restored/$(basename "$photo" .jpg).webp"
done

What kinds of photos can be restored?

• Family archives — grandparents' wedding photos, childhood pictures
• Historical photos — vintage prints, archival images
• Damaged prints — torn, scratched, or water-damaged photos
• Faded prints — sun-bleached or age-faded color photos

Tips for best results

• Scan at high resolution — 300 DPI minimum, 600 DPI for small prints
• Crop to the photo — remove borders and scanner artifacts
• Use lossless format — PNG or TIFF for the input, not JPG
• One photo at a time — the AI works best on a single image

Try it free

5 free credits, no credit card required. Visit crevisto.com to get started.

Links: Web app · All 100 tools · CLI docs · GitHub