# AI photo restoration URL: https://dreambench.ai/tools/ai-photo-restoration Scan or photograph an old print and upload it. Scratches, creases, stains and fading are repaired, soft detail is brought back, and the picture can be colorized. Faces and the composition are kept close to the original; compare them before you share the photo. ## What is AI photo restoration? AI photo restoration repairs an old photo from a scan: scratches, tears, stains and fading are removed and soft detail is brought back, with faces kept close to the original. This tool can also add color. It is for family photos, albums and archives. It is part of every DreamBench plan, from $9.99 a month. ## How to restore an old photo with AI 1. Upload the old photo: A scan or a flat, well-lit photo of the print. Damage, creases and fading are expected. 2. Restore, with or without color: Choose Restore and colorize for natural color, or Restore only to keep the original tones. Then press Restore the photo. The first time, create a free account and choose a plan. 3. Download the restored picture: Repaired, cleaned and sharpened gently, with everyone in it kept close to the original, ready to download full size. ## Should I colorize the photo or keep its tones? Pick the kind of print you have. Each answer sets the form for you. - **A black-and-white family portrait:** Restore and colorize. Skin, hair, clothing and the room are given natural, period-appropriate color as the damage is repaired. The colors are inferred, not recovered, so say that it is colorized when you share it, and keep the original beside it. - **A sepia or brown-toned print:** Restore and colorize. The old tint is replaced with natural color and the fading lifted in the same run. The more contrast the print still has, the more confident the color; a heavily yellowed print gives flatter color. - **A faded color print or a Polaroid:** Restore and colorize. A color print that has turned orange, pink or pale gets natural color back as the fading is lifted. Restore only is written for black-and-white and sepia tones, so it is not the choice for a color print. - **A photo for an archive, a record or a family tree:** Restore only. The scratches, tears, stains and fading are repaired and the original black-and-white or sepia tones are kept, so the result is a cleaner copy of the document, not an interpretation of it. Add color later from the restored copy if you want both. - **A photo that should stay black and white:** Restore only. The print is repaired and its tones kept; nothing is tinted. If you want to see what color would look like, run the restored photo through the colorizer afterward and keep both versions. **Choices.** - Color: Restore and colorize, Restore only ## Colorize a black-and-white photo Natural, period-appropriate color on skin, clothing, sky and walls, with the damage repaired in the same run. Color is inferred, not recovered: the colorizer page explains what that means for a dress or a car whose real color nobody remembers. Tool: [Colorize a black-and-white photo](https://dreambench.ai/tools/colorize-black-and-white-photo). ## Repair a torn, creased or water-damaged photo Tears, folds, cracks in the emulsion, mold spots and water stains are filled by continuing what is around them. A print that got wet is restored once it is dry and scanned: stains, tide marks and lifted emulsion are repaired the same way. A small missing corner comes back convincingly; a face that is mostly gone, or dissolved by water, is rebuilt from what is left rather than recovered, so compare it closely. ## Remove a date stamp or writing from an old photo A date burned into the corner or a note written on the front comes off with the text remover, which fills the area from the picture around it. Restore first, then remove the text, or the other way round. Tool: [Remove text from an image](https://dreambench.ai/tools/remove-text-from-image). ## Bring a restored photo to life Press Bring it to life and the composer opens with the restored photo as a reference, for a short clip of the people breathing and glancing gently. Only animate photos of people you have permission to use. ## How to scan an old photo for restoration On a flatbed, scan a small print at 600 dpi, and never under 300, as a PNG or a high-quality JPEG. With a phone, shoot the print flat, in daylight, with no flash and the print filling the frame; a photo of a framed photo works too, but glare and the glass's reflection count as damage the model may try to repair, so take the print out of the frame if you can. The run works from up to 2048 pixels on the long edge; a larger scan still helps a later upscale. ## Restore, then enlarge for print The restored photo comes back at the image model's own size, which can be smaller than a large scan. For a big print, run the restored JPEG through the image upscaler next: it doubles or quadruples the pixels without redrawing the faces the restoration kept. Tool: [AI image upscaler](https://dreambench.ai/tools/ai-image-upscaler). ## Restore a faded color print or a Polaroid Fading and color casts are part of the damage a run repairs. For a color print that has turned orange, pink or pale, choose Restore and colorize: the photo is given natural color again as the fading is lifted. Restore only is written to keep black-and-white and sepia tones. ## Works with - What it takes: JPEG, PNG, WebP or HEIC, up to 40 MB, straight from a phone or a camera. An iPhone's HEIC photo becomes a JPEG on your device as you choose it, in any browser. A picture larger than 2048 pixels on its long edge is scaled to 2048 before the run. - What you get: A JPEG in your photo's proportions. - Photo labs and print shops: Print the restored JPEG like any photo; for a large print, enlarge it with the image upscaler first. - Ancestry, MyHeritage and FamilySearch: Add the restored picture to a family tree or a profile as a photo upload. - Slideshows and memorial videos: Use it in Keynote, PowerPoint or Google Slides, or animate it in the DreamBench composer. - Scanners and phone scanning apps: Any scan works; the more pixels the scan has, the more detail the restoration has to work from. ## Which model runs it, and where it fails The AI photo restoration runs on [Nano Banana 2](https://dreambench.ai/models/nano-banana-2). Nano Banana 2, also called Gemini 3.1 Flash Image, is an image model from Google DeepMind. It takes your photo and one instruction and draws the picture again with the change made. Google says it can still get spelling, small faces and fine detail wrong, so check them in the result. Every image it makes carries SynthID, Google's invisible watermark that marks it as AI-generated. A run the model declines under its content rules is refunded. - Damage repaired, people kept: Scratches, dust, tears, creases, stains and fading are removed; faces, objects and the composition are kept close to the original. The picture is drawn again, so compare faces before you share it. - Color, inferred honestly: Color is added from what the scene suggests, not recovered: a dress may come back blue where it was green. Restore only keeps the original tones. - Gentle with detail: Soft detail is brought back without the plastic look of heavy sharpening. - Bring it to life next: Keep the restored photo in your library and animate it on a DreamBench video model. **Where it fails.** - A face that is mostly torn away or faded to nothing is rebuilt from what is left, which can drift from the real person. - Color is a guess for anything the scene doesn't settle: clothes, cars and painted walls can come back in the wrong color. - A small or blurry scan has little to restore: the result is cleaner, not sharper than the print really was. Scan at a higher setting, or run the restored photo through the unblur tool afterward. ## AI photo restoration FAQ - **How do I restore an old photo with AI?** To restore an old damaged photo online, scan or photograph the print, upload it and run an AI restoration: scratches, tears, stains and fading are repaired and soft detail brought back, with faces kept close to the original. Choose whether to add color, then compare the result with the scan before you share it. Make it with any DreamBench plan and download it full size. - **Is colorizing accurate?** Color is inferred from what the scene suggests, not recovered from the print, so it is plausible rather than certain: skin, sky and foliage tend to be right, clothing colors are a guess. Choose Restore only if the original tones matter. - **Will faces be changed?** They are kept close to the original. The instruction asks the model to keep every person, face, object and the composition as they are, but the picture is drawn again, so a face can shift slightly, and a heavily damaged face is rebuilt from what is left. Compare the before and after in the page before you share it. - **Can AI fix really faded or scratched photos?** Yes, AI can fix faded and scratched photos: scratches, dust, creases, stains and fading are removed and the faded tones are brought back. What is missing altogether, such as a torn-off corner or a face faded to nothing, is rebuilt from what is left, so it is a likely version rather than the original. - **How should I scan the photo?** Scan an old photo for restoration on a flatbed at 600 dpi, and never under 300, saved as PNG or a high-quality JPEG. With a phone, shoot the print flat in daylight, without flash, filling the frame, out of its glass. More detail in means more detail out, and a larger scan also helps a later enlargement. - **Can ChatGPT or Gemini restore an old photo instead?** They can try: both edit a photo from a prompt, and the result depends on the prompt. Here the instruction is written for restoration, repairing the damage while keeping faces, the composition and the photo's period look close to the original, and the result downloads full size. - **Can I restore an old photo in Photoshop instead?** Yes, by hand: the Spot Healing Brush and Clone Stamp for dust and scratches, Content-Aware Fill for tears, and a Curves layer for fading. That takes skill and time for every print; this page does the repair in one run, and you compare the result with the scan on the page before you download it. - **Can I restore an old photo in Canva or on my iPhone instead?** Partly. An iPhone's Photos app can straighten, brighten and remove small marks with Clean Up on models that support it, and Canva has adjustments and an eraser. Neither repairs tears and fading across a whole print or adds color, which is this tool's job. You need no app: this page works in the browser on a phone, tablet or computer, Android or iPhone, Mac or Windows. - **What does a professional retoucher charge to restore a photo?** It depends on the damage: a retoucher quotes each print by the hours of hand work it needs, and a torn or heavily faded photo takes the most. A run here uses the credits the button shows before you press it, and you see the result at once. For an irreplaceable original with heavy damage, a human retoucher brings judgment the model lacks. - **Can I turn a restored photo into a video?** Yes. Press Bring it to life and the composer opens with the restored photo as a reference image and a prompt for gentle movement, the people breathing and glancing; DreamBench's video models can make a short clip from it. Rendering the clip uses credits from your plan. - **Can I restore an old photo without paying?** No. Every run needs a DreamBench plan; you create an account on the way, and the button shows the price in credits before you press it. The tools come with every plan, alongside the video models, and a run that fails is refunded. - **Can I restore a whole album at once?** No. The tool takes one photo per run, and there is no batch upload. Scan the album, then run each photo in turn: each run is priced separately, and the button shows the price before you press it. Start with the prints that matter most. - **Does the restored photo have a watermark?** No visible one. A DreamBench tool adds no watermark to an image it returns, on any plan. The image model that repairs the photo embeds SynthID, Google's invisible mark that identifies a picture as made or edited by AI; it changes nothing you can see, and the download is the restored photo full size. - **How much does the AI photo restoration cost?** A run starts at 7 credits from your DreamBench plan, depending on the photo, and once you have a plan the button shows each run's price before you press it. Starter, $9.99 a month, includes 1,100 credits a month, at least 122 runs of the AI photo restoration, plus AI video. A run that fails is refunded. - **Do I need an account to use the AI photo restoration?** Yes: a free account and a DreamBench plan. The tools are part of every plan, from Starter at $9.99 a month. - **Which image files does the AI photo restoration take?** A photo up to 40 megabytes: JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC or another format your browser opens. A photo straight from a phone is fine, an iPhone's HEIC included: the page scales a large picture down to 2048 pixels on its long edge before the run, so the result is never larger than the page says. - **Can I use what the AI photo restoration makes commercially?** Yes. Under the DreamBench Terms you may use what a tool makes for personal and commercial purposes, including advertising, monetized content and work for clients, with no separate commercial-use upgrade. The Terms don't guarantee copyright in a result or clear another person's rights in your upload, so only use photos you have the rights to. - **Is my photo used to train AI?** No. DreamBench doesn't use your prompts, uploads or videos to train or fine-tune AI models, and any future training program would be opt-in. - **What happens to my uploaded photo?** It stays in your browser until you make a result. Then it is used to make that result and nothing else, and removed from the tool's storage after seven days along with the result. A result you keep in your library stays as long as you keep it. Runs on Nano Banana 2. DreamBench is an independent platform; its tools come with every plan (https://dreambench.ai/pricing). Copy last checked 2026-10-14.