Although we print fewer and fewer photos in the digital age, it is not uncommon to find old photos that are damaged or degraded and want to digitize them. But once digitized, depending on their condition, it may be interesting to restore old photos to regain quality lost over time.
I've already told you about several online services that allow you to do this, but some of them have disappeared, or have become paid or partially paid. PhotoRestore.io is relatively new on the web, it offers five different restoration tools based on artificial intelligence, and for now, it's free…
It’s important to keep in mind that automated photo restoration systems usually aim for a “good enough” level of quality. So, while they can’t replace a professional working meticulously on every pixel, these tools are great for quick, occasional processing. PhotoRestore.io is one of those free services that offers satisfactory performance to bring your old shots back to life.
Restore old photos with PhotoRestore.io tools
If you’re looking to restore old or damaged photos, PhotoRestore.io offers a simple and free photo restoration service powered by AI. Using sophisticated algorithms, this suite of online tools will attempt to repair your most damaged photos.
PhotoRestore.io offers five tools to enhance your photos: restore, enhance quality, remove background, increase resolution, and colorize.
The restoration tool combines smoothing, sharpening, and resolution upscaling to repair imperfections without erasing more serious damage like tears and creases.
As for the quality enhancement option, it works in a similar way by applying a variant of GFPGAN or CodeFormer (face restoration algorithms) on the faces with sometimes unfortunately surprising results.
Background removal, while effective, is probably not PhotoRestore.io's most convincing tool and there are other dedicated tools that do it better. Tests with different types of images have given rather disappointing results. Increasing the resolution will enlarge your photo up to 2 pixels per side (horizontal or vertical), while the colorization, which is largely improvable, produces a final photo of very small dimensions. For this last tool, I recommend you rather Paddles ou Colorize! which have proven themselves in the field of image colorization.
Each tool works automatically and therefore does not have any options or settings. The site allows you to compare the original photo to the retouched photo by placing them side by side or superimposing them.
PhotoRestore.io, the ideal tool for fans of quick retouching
All in all, PhotoRestore.io is a good choice for casual users who want to quickly restore their old photos. While the site still has some room for improvement, it is already quite popular: nearly 175 images have been processed so far, proving that many people appreciate this free service. So, don't hesitate any longer and give your photos a new lease on life with PhotoRestore.io!
Thank you for this very helpful article! PhotoRestore.io seems like the perfect solution for bringing old family photos back to life without spending any money. Using AI for restoration is truly clever and accessible to everyone. I will definitely try this service to digitize my own archives.