How to Enhance and Restore Old Photos with AI (Free Tools That Actually Work)

What Happens to Old Photos Over Time

Old photos degrade in several ways: fading (colour dyes break down), loss of contrast, blur from older lenses or small sensors, noise and grain, physical scratches and dust, and colour shift (especially in photos from the 1970s–1990s which often develop a magenta or green cast).

AI photo enhancement can address all of these except physical scratches, which require the Object Remover for small marks or manual retouching.

The AI Tools That Actually Work

Real-ESRGAN for Resolution

Real-ESRGAN is a generative model specifically trained to restore photo realism in degraded images. Unlike older sharpening tools that increase local contrast and introduce halos, Real-ESRGAN hallucinates missing detail based on what it learned from millions of high-quality images.

• 2× upscale produces cleaner scans from 300 DPI originals
• 4× upscale is the standard for digital restoration projects
• Face enhancement mode (GFPGAN) recovers facial detail separately

GFPGAN for Faces

GFPGAN (Generative Facial Prior GAN) is a face-specific restoration model. It identifies face regions and applies a dedicated enhancement pass that recovers eye clarity and catchlights, skin texture without over-smoothing, lip detail, and overall facial sharpness.

Brush's Photo Enhancer automatically applies GFPGAN when it detects a face in the image.

Step-by-Step: Enhance an Old Photo

1. Scan the Original (If Applicable)

• Scan at 600 DPI minimum for standard prints
• Scan at 1200 DPI for small prints (wallet-size, old 4×6 prints)
• Scan at 2400 DPI for negatives or slides
• Save as TIFF (lossless) not JPEG for the scan

2. Basic Colour Correction (Before AI Enhancement)

Use your phone's photo editor or any basic tool to apply auto white balance, slight exposure increase if the photo is generally dark, and a vibrance boost of 10–15% to bring back colour saturation. This gives the AI a better starting point.

3. Upload to Photo Enhancer

1. Go to Photo Enhancer
2. Upload your scanned or digital old photo
3. Enable Face Enhance if there are people in the photo
4. Select your scale factor (4× is recommended for old photos)
5. Preview and download

What AI Enhancement Can and Cannot Fix

Can Fix

• Low resolution / blur from poor optics
• Faded colours (moderate cases)
• Noise and grain
• Underexposed shadows
• Out-of-focus faces (face enhancement mode)

Cannot Fix

• Physical damage — scratches, tears, foxing — use Object Remover for small marks
• Extreme colour degradation from sun damage
• Genuinely out-of-focus shots
• Heavy JPEG artefacts from low-quality original compressions

Printing Restored Photos

Original scan	After 4× AI upscale	Printable at
600×400 px	2400×1600 px	8×6 inches at 300 DPI
1200×900 px	4800×3600 px	16×12 inches at 300 DPI
2400×1800 px	9600×7200 px	32×24 inches at 300 DPI

Frequently Asked Questions

Will the enhanced photo look fake?

AI enhancement can occasionally over-smooth skin or add hallucinated texture. Use the before/after slider to compare. Family history archives should keep the original alongside the enhanced version.

Can I colourize black and white photos?

Colourisation is a separate tool coming in V2. The current Photo Enhancer works on colour photos and improves them; it does not convert B&W to colour.

How do I preserve restored photos long-term?

Save as TIFF (lossless) for archival. Keep multiple copies: local hard drive, cloud storage, and optionally a printed archival copy.