How to Restore Old Photos at Home (and When to Call an Artist)

Before you fix anything, get a clean digital copy. This protects the original and gives you something safe to work on. It also means you can share the photo without passing the fragile print around.

A flatbed scanner gives the best result. Scan at 600 DPI for a standard print, and 1200 DPI for a small or wallet-size photo. Save the file as a TIFF or a high-quality JPEG. Wipe the scanner glass first, and place the photo face down and straight.

No scanner at home? Your phone camera works well. Lay the photo flat near a window in soft daylight, not direct sun. Turn off the flash, which causes glare and hot spots. Hold the phone directly above the picture, fill the frame, and tap to focus before you shoot. Take a few and keep the sharpest one.

Old photos are more delicate than they look. The emulsion, which is the thin image layer on the front, can lift or flake. Handle every print by the edges, and wash and dry your hands first. Clean cotton gloves help if you have a pair.

For loose dust, use a soft, dry brush or a gentle puff of air, working from the center outward. Do not use water, household cleaners, or a damp cloth on the image side. Moisture can bond photos together or dissolve the emulsion. If prints are stuck to each other or stuck to glass, stop and leave them alone. Forcing them apart tears the surface for good.

Store the originals well once you are done. Keep them flat in acid-free sleeves or boxes, away from heat, damp, and sunlight. A closet inside the house is far kinder than a hot attic or a cold basement. Good storage now saves you a bigger repair later.

Once you have a good scan, some small problems are easy to improve with free or low-cost tools. You do not need to be an expert to make a faded photo look brighter and cleaner.

• Free software: GIMP and Photopea run on a computer and cost nothing. The Photos app on iPhone and Google Photos on Android both have simple edit sliders.
• Brightness and contrast: Nudge these to bring back a washed-out or dark image. Small changes look more natural than big ones.
• Cropping and straightening: Trim rough white borders and level a crooked scan.
• Spot removal: A healing or clone tool can hide small specks, dust, and light scratches.
• Color cast: Old color prints often turn orange or yellow. A white-balance or color slider can calm that down.

Always work on a copy of the file, never your only scan. Save your steps as you go, so you can go back a step if a change looks wrong.

It helps to be honest about the limits before you spend an evening on it. Home tools are good at brightness, color, and small specks. They struggle with anything the camera never captured in the first place.

Blur is the clearest example. If a photo was out of focus or shaken when it was taken, the fine detail was never recorded. No slider and no app can invent it back. Some softness can be sharpened a little, and contrast and edges can be improved so a blurry photo reads better. But a truly blurry face cannot be made perfectly crisp, and anyone who promises that is guessing. We would rather tell you the truth.

The same goes for large missing pieces, a torn-off corner that held a face, or heavy water damage that has eaten into the image. These need a person to rebuild them carefully, matching skin, hair, and background by hand.

Some photos are worth handing to a professional from the start. Consider a hand restoration when the photo has deep creases, tears, missing sections, mold, or fading so heavy that faces are hard to make out. These repairs take skill and patience, and one wrong move on the original cannot be undone.

This is what our artists do. They are real people here in the United States who restore photos by hand, never with AI. That matters, because AI apps are fast and cheap but they guess. They invent detail and quietly change a face until it is not quite your grandmother anymore. A human artist studies the real person and stays faithful to them.

You never have to mail the original unless you want to. Upload a scan or a phone photo from home, anywhere in the US, and an artist gets to work. If you prefer, you can mail the print in, tracked and insured. Most restorations come back in about one to three days.

Prices start at $38 for the first photo. The price depends only on the artist tier you choose, not on how damaged the photo is. A badly torn, water-stained picture costs the same as a lightly faded one. Local restoration studios often charge $50 to $500 and take longer.

You also get free revisions until the photo looks right to you. You only pay when you are happy, and every order is backed by a 100 percent money-back guarantee. We are a family-owned company, rated 4.96 out of 5, and trusted by more than 400,000 families.

Try the home steps first. If the photo is beyond them, we are glad to take it from there.