Implementing artificial intelligence in the photo editing process can be truly beneficial. AI-powered tools provide a series of automated adjustments and groundbreaking features, enabling us to streamline post-processing and save a lot of time. We can use AI to automatically enhance our photos, to upscale images without losing quality or to restore old photos. In the past, breathing life back into old photographs was a job for specialized retouching services or for those who possessed advanced editing skills. No matter the restorer, the process was extremely arduous. Well, not anymore!

Gone are the days when digitally repairing an old photo required hours of manual adjustments. Now, with the aid of AI photo restoration tools, we have the amazing opportunity to restore damaged, aged or low-quality photographs with just a couple of clicks. These tools leverage machine learning algorithms and computer vision to automatically correct imperfections such as scratches, tears, discoloration or fading and boost the overall image quality. If you’re looking to revive old family photos, improve historical archives or revitalize professional photography collections, here are seven AI-powered solutions to help you accomplish your task.

ImageColorizer

ImageColorizer is a tool particularly developed to infuse new life into old photographs. The software uses advanced AI technology to help you improve your images 100% automatically, eliminating the necessity of manual tweaks. Available as an online platform, a desktop-based program (Windows and Mac) and mobile solution (Android and iPhone), ImageColorizer stands out through its variety of features. Here’s what it can accomplish:

• Colorize black and white photos.
• Restore old pictures while upscaling them by 200%.
• Retouch blurry portraits.
• Repair scratches, tears, bent corners or smudges.
• Remove unwanted objects.
• Improve overall quality by reducing noise, adjusting brightness and boosting clarity.

The software is compatible with the JPG, PNG and WebP formats, is equipped with batch processing capabilities and offers a simple workflow to quickly enhance your images. All you have to do is select the desired restoration feature, upload your image, click on the Upload & Start button and let the AI do its magic. Once the new image is processed, you have the possibility to further edit it. The tool allows you to apply photo filters, fine-tune various image settings, write on it, decorate it with vintage borders and more.

Pros

• The wide spectrum of photo restoration features.
• It effectively removes creases and scratches.
• Excellent image colorization, with natural-looking colors.
• You can restore images even without signing up.
• The generous free plan, with no watermark applied to the exported photos.

Cons

• You can apply restoration effects only one at a time. The software doesn’t remove scratches/dust, reduce the noise and improve clarity simultaneously. You need to complete one operation and then go back and proceed with the next task.

Price

ImageColorizer comes with a free plan, which provides 50 credits/month (1 credit = 1 processed image) and all the AI features. If you need more credits or batch process files, you’ll have to opt for one of the paid plans:

• Starter: $3.9/month
• Premium: $6.9/month
• Business: $9.9/month

MyHeritage

MyHeritage is not your typical AI-powered product. This is an online genealogy platform that gives you the opportunity to discover your family story. The website makes it possible to upload and browse photos, find relatives, order a DNA kit to discover your origins and build your family tree. Basically this is the place where families meet online, share and preserve their heritage. Of course, in addition to this side, the platform can be used as an AI photo restorer.

MyHeritage boasts a Photos section, dedicated to editing and enhancing old family pics using artificial intelligence. Here’s what the website can do:

• Colorize – apply realistic colors to black & white photos.
• Photo Enhancement – repair damaged pictures, upscale and enhance pixelated, low-resolution images.
• AI time machine – create imaginary AI avatars of yourself as you would have looked in different historical periods.
• Deep Story – upload an old photo of a family member and convert it into an amazing video.
• Animate – animate faces in historical photos.

Restoring an old photo is really easy, because your only task is to upload it. Then the software will automatically enhance it. If there are tears or scratches, simply click on the Repair button. If you want to colorize the image, click on the Colorize button. The software will do everything for you.

Pros

• Simple to use.
• It processes images in a timely manner.
• It is able to efficiently unblur and enhance portraits.
• The repair tool does a good job removing tears, stains or scratches.

Cons

• You can enhance only a couple of pictures for free.
• The magic wand icon that is automatically stamped over the enhanced photos.
• The MyHeritage watermark applied to the processed photos in the free plan.

Price

Once you register, you can use the MyHeritage Photo Enhancer with a couple of files free of charge. Afterwards you’ll have to upgrade to the paid plan, which is $12.46/month.

HitPaw

HitPaw represents an online, desktop and mobile solution to enhance your photos with the aid of artificial intelligence. The platform places at your disposal a multitude of AI-powered photo enhancement tools, including one to fix deteriorated and faded photos. The software provides multiple AI models created for specific tasks: to remove scratches, to retouch portraits, to colorize black and white images and to increase the image resolution while improving the clarity and details.

Restoring an old photograph on the HitPaw website is a task easy to accomplish thanks to the intuitive UI. Once you access this feature, you’ll find all the editing settings on the left side panel, while on the center you’ll see a comparison view between the original and the altered image. The process is based on clear, simple-to-follow steps:

1. Upload the picture.
2. Select the desired AI model(s) from the four options available.
3. Select the output format.
4. Preview and download the repaired photo.

Pros

• Quite quick in repairing damaged pictures.
• Excellent face unblurring and scratch removal.
• Realistic colorization, without going overboard with the colors.
• Significant overall improvements in image clarity.

Cons

• You can’t export even a single photo in the free plan.

Price

HitPaw gives users the chance to freely test this feature. You can preview the improvements made to the original picture, but unfortunately you can’t download it. For that it’s mandatory to upgrade to the Pro version, which lets you download up to 60 images/day. There are three subscriptions available:

• Weekly: $6.99
• Monthly: $16.99
• Yearly: $129.99

VanceAI

VanceAI is an AI tool that gives you the chance to revive old pictures both online and offline. The main advantages of the desktop edition are represented by the batch processing capabilities and the faster processing speed. If you don’t actually need these features, you can edit images directly on the website without any worries. The restoration options are the same on both editions.

VanceAI is equipped with several features to help you fix damaged photos. The software is designed to repair scratches, creases and spots, to improve the image quality by reducing the noise and enhancing the details, to automatically detect and enhance human faces and to colorize black & white pictures. There are two settings available for photo colorization: classic restoration and delicate reproduction. The latter lets you add textual instructions to describe the colors you want in the picture.

Improving your photos isn’t complicated at all. All you have to do is:

1. Upload the photo.
2. Hit the Start to Process button.
3. Preview the result and click on the Edit icon for additional fixes (optional).
4. Click on the Download button.

Pros

• User-friendly platform.
• You can choose between manual and automatic improvements, which makes it ideal for both beginners and advanced users.
• The denoising and face restoring features work quite well, generating visible improvements.
• Fast batch processing for the desktop version.

Cons

• The scratch removal feature is hit-and-miss. In our tests, it did remove the scratches in a certain proportion, but at the same time it added some white dots that weren’t present in the original photo.
• It doesn’t accurately follow the text prompts to colorize the image.
• There’s support for only two image formats: JPG and PNG.

Price

VanceAI provides 3 credits to free users and allows you to process 5 images per day. Downloading a watermark-free image costs 2 credits. When you’ll run out of credits, you’ll have to purchase more to continue using it. There’s a different price plan for the two editions.

Online version

• 100 credits: $4.95
• 200 credits: $7.95
• 500 credits: $12.95
• 1,000 credits: $17.95

Desktop version

• 1 month: $39.90
• 1 year: $99.90
• Lifetime license: $129.90

Nero AI

Nero AI is an AI-powered alternative created to enhance and edit images on multiple platforms and devices. You have the possibility to perform an old photo restoration directly in your browser, on your desktop computer (PC and Mac) and on your mobile device (Android and iPhone). The software uses AI models to automatically perform three restoration-related operations: depending on your needs, you can repair scratches and smudges on images, enhance the blurred facial features of a human face and colorize b&w photographs.

Nero AI is compatible with various image formats, from JPG and PNG to HEIC, WebP and JIF, and allows you to process images in bulk for an improved productivity. Fixing the imperfections in your old photos is something intuitive. Here’s what you have to do:

1. Upload the picture(s) you want to restore.
2. Manually select the effect(s) you want to apply from the 3 available options.
3. Click the Start button.
4. Preview the image and hit the Download button.

It’s worth mentioning that the platform offers the possibility to step in and make adjustments if you don’t like the resulting image. Just click on the Manual-fix button and begin painting out the scratches. You can also upscale your photo 1x, 2x or 4x.

Pros

• It’s quite easy to use.
• It accurately enhances facial details and produces clear portraits.
• The option to perform manual fixes if you’re not satisfied with the initial result.
• The possibility to download watermark-free photos in the free version.

Cons

• The scratch removal feature doesn’t always work. During our tests, it failed to eliminate scratches from a couple of pictures.

Price

Nero AI provides a limited number of credits, so you can freely test some of its features. You can get 20 credits more by signing up to the newsletter. There are two paid options:

• Pro Pass: 300 credits for $19.95/month
• Business: Custom credits

Flex Clip

Flex Clip is not an alternative specially built for this purpose. This is an online video editor, equipped with an abundance of features to create engaging clips. But in addition to the video creation capabilities, Flex Clip places at the users’ disposal a wide array of AI-driven tools to generate, fix and enhance photographs. Among the diverse features, we can find the one we’re most interested in: photo restoration.

So how can this platform help us transform our old family pictures? In many ways actually. The website offers various options to revive our pictures. Depending on your necessities, you can use AI to colorize b&w photos, to automatically repair and enhance them, to manually remove scratches/creases or upscale images to a higher resolution. The process is pretty straightforward: upload your image, choose from the four image settings from the left side panel and hit the Generate button. Once the image is generated, all that remains to be done is download it from the top right corner.

It’s worth mentioning that the software is compatible with a large variety of formats, from the classic JPG and PNG to WebP, SVG and ICO.

Pros

• User-friendly interface, with a quick editing process.
• Plenty of restoration settings.
• It works well when it comes to enhancing facial features.
• The support for multiple image formats.

Cons

• Scratch removal can be done only manually.
• The limitations of free version: only 3 tries available, the Flex Clip logo stamped over the processed photos.

Price

The platform offers 3 tries to test the photo restoration feature. Afterwards you’ll have to purchase credits to continue using it (2 credits = 1 time). You can buy a one-time package:

• 200 credits: $4.99
• 400 credits + 50 credits bonus: $9.99
• 600 credits + 100 credits bonus: $14.99
• 800 credits + 150 credits bonus: $19.99
• 1,000 credits + 250 credits bonus: $24.99
• 1,200 credits + 400 credits bonus: $29.99

Hotpot

Hotpot is our last proposal to bring back to life damaged photographs. The platform uses deep learning algorithms to automatically eliminate scratches (in theory), sharpen images, enhance faces and colorize black and white pictures. Unlike other platforms, this one allows you to upload not only black & white, but also color photos for repairing.

The interface is icon-based, with a rather unusual layout and no side-by-side comparison view between the original and modified image. The editing process is intuitive enough though:

1. Click on the image icon to upload your file.
2. Enable the “Has Scratch?” option if necessary.
3. Click on the white arrow icon to process the picture.

Once the image is created, hover over it to check your options. You have the possibility to directly download the photo or colorize, edit and resize it using AI tools.

Pros

• The numerous AI-tools for image editing, including face enhancement..
• The option to choose between a wide range of colorization factors.
• You can test the features even without registering.

Cons

• It doesn’t really remove scratches from photos.
• No before/after image slider to compare the results.
• The restrictions of the free plan.

Price

Hotpot lets you try the photo restoration feature free of charge, but there are numerous limitations. For instance, you can only download low-res images, that are practically unusable. To enjoy a full-size, high-quality image you need to opt for the Premium version. You can pay once, monthly or yearly:

One-time payment

• 1,000 credits: $12
• 2,500 credits: $30
• 5,000 credits: $60

Monthly

• 1,000 credits: $10/month
• 2,500 credits: $25/month
• 5,000 credits: $50/month

Yearly

• 1,000 credits/month: $100/year
• 2,500 credits/month: $250/year
• 5,000 credits/month: $500/year