MemoryCherish vs RetouchUp: Volume Retouching or Restoration Specialist?

RetouchUp offers photo retouching, clipping path, color correction and photo restoration. The company states that all its pricing is per image rather than per task, and states it bills per photo with no contracts or minimums. If editing work reaches your desk every week, that structure is easy to plan around: one per-image figure, multiplied by whatever the month brings, with nothing to sign.

MemoryCherish sells one service. Damaged family photographs, rebuilt by hand, one file at a time. That is the whole menu.

Neither shape is better in the abstract. A wide catalog moves volume, and volume builds speed and fluency across a lot of file types. A single-service shop builds a narrower instinct instead, because every job that arrives is somebody's only surviving picture of a person, and there is no second copy sitting in a folder if it goes wrong.

Both describe human hands on the work. RetouchUp describes its offering as human-powered and states that a human touch is the only proper way to treat artwork. It also states its artists do photo retouching and restoration full time rather than seasonally. On our side: US-based artists, never AI, about four hours of desk time on an average photo, and 37-plus years of combined artist experience across the team.

On company history, RetouchUp states it was established in 2006, and states it was created by Hollywood FotoFix, Inc., which has been in business since 1993. Those are the company's own published statements about itself, and reporting them that way is the only honest method available to anyone writing about someone else's business.

At the time of writing, RetouchUp's services page lists photo restoration at $35.00 per image. MemoryCherish opens at $38. So no, we are not the cheapest name on this page, and we are not going to pretend three dollars is the interesting part of the comparison.

The billing logic is the interesting part. RetouchUp states its pricing is per image rather than per task, which means a file carrying several problems is still one line on the invoice. MemoryCherish also charges per photo, and the figure is decided by the artist tier you select. A print with a missing corner, mold across a cheek and a crease through an eye costs exactly what a gentle fade costs at that same tier. Choosing the level of artist is your decision. How many hours the damage eats is ours.

That distinction bites hardest in the situation people actually buy restoration for, which is a photo that is genuinely wrecked. Three questions worth asking wherever you order:

• Is the figure flat, or a starting point? Entry pricing is normal and legitimate across this category, but a "from" price and a flat per-image price are different promises, and you should know which one you are reading.
• Can the price change once somebody opens the file? Get that answer in writing before you upload anything.
• What is delivered for the money? A file that holds up printed at 16x20 is a different product from a small copy sized for a phone screen.

Published prices move. Whatever number you read here, load the company's own page and confirm it on the day you order rather than trusting an article, this one included.

Terminology matters in this part of the comparison, so we are using each company's own term rather than upgrading it into something stronger.

At the time of writing, RetouchUp advertises free reworks, and advertises a 100% satisfaction guarantee. That is what the company publishes, and that is what we report. How any of it runs day to day is theirs to describe, not ours to characterize.

MemoryCherish includes free revisions until the photo is right. Not one free round, not a window that closes on day seven. If a jawline reads wrong or the skin tone drifted warm, you say so and an artist goes back into the file. If we still cannot get there, the guarantee returns your money as cash rather than credit toward another order, and anything already delivered stays yours.

Advice that applies to us as squarely as to anyone else: a line on a homepage is not the same as terms you can hold a business to. Before ordering from any restoration shop, ask for three things in plain language.

• What counts as a revision and what counts as a new job.
• Whether a refund arrives as money or as credit, and how long it takes to land.
• Who decides the work is finished, you or the shop.

Any business that answers all three without hedging is a business you can buy from with confidence. That test will serve you better than a comparison table, and it takes one email.

Retouching improves a photograph that still exists. Restoration rebuilds one that is partly gone. The software looks similar from outside the studio. The work is not.

What heavy restoration involves in practice: reconstructing a shoulder using the opposite shoulder as reference, matching film grain across a repair so the patch does not read as a smear of plastic, handling silvering on the surface of an old print, working around mold that has eaten pigment rather than sitting on top of it, and keeping a face recognizable when part of the information is simply missing. About four hours goes into an average MemoryCherish photo. Severe cases run considerably longer, which is exactly why we price by artist tier instead of by damage.

The rule we hold to: we rebuild only from what survives in the print. If an eye is gone, we do not generate a convincing replacement eye. Automated tools can regenerate facial detail rather than recovering it, and a sharper file is not automatically a truer one. That is the failure families notice at the memorial rather than at checkout.

A sourcing note, because precision matters when writing about other companies. RetouchUp states its digital oil painting effect is produced by painting over the image with a digital brush by hand. That statement describes that specific product. It is not a description of how their restoration service runs, and we are not going to stretch it into one.

Wherever you order, ask to see before and after examples showing damage that resembles yours. Not the studio's prettiest sample. A photo with your problem in it.

Most disappointing restorations trace back to one of two things: a weak file going in, or a fuzzy expectation coming out.

Going in, resolution decides everything. No artist can rebuild detail your scan never captured. On a flatbed, 600 dpi is a comfortable default for a standard print, and higher is worth it for anything small you intend to enlarge. Without a scanner, a phone held steady in even, indirect light works better than most people expect. The bigger mistake is pre-editing. Cropping off the border, running an auto-enhance, or sharpening before you send throws away information an artist would rather have had. Send the plainest, largest file you can produce and let the person you hired make the decisions.

Coming out, settle the deliverable before money moves:

• Pixel dimensions and file type. Anything headed for a frame needs to hold at print size, not merely on a screen.
• Restoration, colorization, or both. They are separate jobs and are normally priced separately.
• Whether the file is yours permanently. With MemoryCherish it is, with nothing to renew and no licence conditions attached.

One habit worth keeping afterwards: store the untouched scan alongside the restored version. In twenty years somebody researching this family will want to see both the condition of the print and what an artist made of it. The unedited file is part of the record, and it is the only thing that proves what was really there.

Pick RetouchUp if your needs run wider than restoration. They publish photo retouching, clipping path, color correction and photo restoration, state that pricing is per image rather than per task, and state they bill per photo with no contracts or minimums. For a photographer or online seller with steady editing volume and an occasional damaged print, one per-image account covering several services is genuinely practical. At the time of writing, their services page lists restoration at $35.00 per image, they advertise free reworks and a 100% satisfaction guarantee, and they list a business address at 345 South Main St, Alpine, UT 84004.

Consider FixThePhoto if you want an editing service with a published entry price and a customer sign-off built into the process. At the time of writing, their pricing page lists photo restoration from $30.00 per photo, and their published workflow includes a step where the customer accepts the retouched photos or requests changes. The company says it was founded in 2003.

Pick MemoryCherish if this is one photograph and it matters more than the invoice. US artists, never AI. About four hours on a typical file. From $38, with the artist tier setting the price and the damage never touching it. Free revisions until it is right, cash back if it never is, and files that stay yours. Nothing ships either: you upload, we work, the print stays in your house.

Then judge us the way you should judge anybody on this page. Over 400,000 families served, 2,176-plus verified reviews averaging 4.96 out of 5, 37-plus years of combined artist experience, museum and historical society work, and samples showing faces. Faces are where restoration is won or lost, and no price comparison can show you one.