Old damage is rarely one thing. A seventy-year-old print has usually faded, collected surface scratches, and picked up a crease or two along the way. Repair means dealing with all of it together without flattening the character of the original.
Layered repair
Fading, scratches, creases and stains handled together, not one at a time.
Texture kept
We repair damage, we do not sand the image into plastic smoothness.
No print needed
A phone photo of the print is enough to start.
24-hour delivery
Quote, approval, restoration, delivery — the whole loop in a day.
Fading. Dyes and silver break down under light, contrast drops and the image turns yellow or grey. This is recoverable more often than people expect, because the information is still there, just compressed.
Physical wear. Scratches, abrasions, dust embedded in the emulsion, the fine crazing that develops on old lacquered prints.
Structural damage. Creases, tears, missing corners, folded edges.
Environmental damage. Water stains, mold spots, foxing — the brown speckles that appear on paper stored in damp places.
We cannot recover detail that was never captured, and we will not pretend we did. If a photograph is so blurry that a face is genuinely unrecognisable, sharper software does not fix that — it invents features. We will tell you before you pay rather than after.
Equally, if a section of the photo is missing entirely, anything we put there is a reconstruction, and we label it as such.
Do not flatten a curled print by force; old paper cracks. Place it face-up on a flat surface in daylight near a window, but out of direct sun. Shoot straight down, fill the frame, and keep the phone still — rest it on a stack of books if you can.
Send the picture as-is. We handle rotation, perspective correction and cropping as part of the restoration.
Recommended
Standard — $19
Most customers choose this for old photo repair. Add colour, printing files or archive batches at checkout — the price is per photo and nothing is charged until you approve the quote.
Start with this photoUsually yes. Fading compresses contrast rather than destroying detail, and it is one of the more reliable repairs we do. Send it through the upload form or the chat and we will tell you honestly before you pay.
Yes, in most cases. Surface mold spots and foxing can be cleaned digitally. Where mold has eaten into the paper and left real loss, that area has to be reconstructed — which we will flag upfront.
It does if it is done carelessly. Our defaults preserve grain, keep sharpening conservative, and avoid smoothing skin. A repair should look like a well-kept copy of the original, not a modern digital image.
Photo restoration, done properly
Professional photo restoration from $19. Torn, faded and scratched photographs repaired by AI and checked by a human artist. Delivered within 24 hours.
Restoring faded photographs
Faded, yellowed or washed-out photograph? We recover contrast, remove the colour cast and rebuild detail from $19, delivered within 24 hours.
Repairing a torn photograph
Torn or cracked old photograph? We digitally rejoin tears, rebuild missing corners and remove crease lines from $19, delivered within 24 hours.