Restore photos in bulk with AI in minutes.

AI photo restoration works best on fading, yellowing, light to moderate scratches, blur, dust spots, and color shifts. These are the most common problems in old photo collections and the AI fixes them reliably across large batches. If your photos are faded, yellowed, or slightly scratched, expect excellent results on the vast majority of your collection.

The AI also handles more serious damage well: water stains, mold spots, heavy scratches, and creased or folded prints. The results on heavily damaged photos are not always perfect, but they are consistently better than the original and often surprisingly good. For most family collections, the AI produces results comparable to what a professional retoucher would deliver.

Where AI has limits: if a large part of a face is missing (torn off, burned, or completely destroyed), the AI cannot invent what was never there. It can fill in small missing areas convincingly, but not large ones. Photos where faces are extremely tiny (like distant group shots) also produce weaker results because there is not enough detail for the AI to work with. For these edge cases, a human retoucher may still be the better option.

One advantage AI has over manual restoration: consistency at scale. A human retoucher doing 100 photos will have good days and bad days. The AI applies the same level of attention to photo number 100 as it does to photo number 1. For bulk projects, this consistency matters.

First, you need digital versions of your photos. You do not need a scanner or any special equipment. Just take a picture of each old photo with your phone. Lay the photo flat on a table, hold your phone above it, and shoot. Near a window in daylight works best. Do not use flash. The photo does not need to be perfectly straight or cropped. Our AI handles tilted, slightly shadowed, and imperfect phone photos just fine. If you have a lot of photos (50 or more), you can also take them to a copy shop like FedEx or Staples and ask them to scan the stack. They will give you the files on a USB drive or by email.

Open restorephotosapp.com/restore in your web browser on your computer or phone. You will see a simple page where you can add photos. Click the upload area and select your photo files, or drag them from a folder on your computer and drop them onto the page. You can select many photos at once. There is no need to add them one by one.

Try the bulk restore tool

Before uploading, pick a restore mode. If you are not sure which one to use, leave it on "Restore Old Photo." This is the default and works on most old photos. It fixes fading, scratches, blur, yellowing, and water damage all at once. If your photos are not damaged but just look soft or blurry (common for 1980s and 1990s photos), try "Enhance Portrait" instead. If your photos only have scratches and the colors look fine, use "Clean Up," which removes marks without changing anything else.

Once you upload your photos, each one appears in a queue. The AI starts processing them automatically, one after another. You can see the status next to each photo: waiting, processing, or done. You do not need to sit and watch. A batch of 30 photos takes about 10 minutes. Start the batch, go do something else, and come back when it is done.

When all photos are finished, click "Download All" to get a ZIP file with all your restored photos inside. A ZIP file is just a bundled folder. On most computers you double-click it to open it and see your photos. The file names stay the same as your originals, so you can easily match each restored photo to the original.

For large collections (more than 50 photos), upload them in groups of 30 to 50. Check the results after each group. If you notice that some photos look better with a different mode, you can switch for the next group.

Optional: if you have black-and-white photos, you can add color after restoring. Upload the restored photos again and select "Colorize B&W." The AI adds realistic color to faces, clothing, and backgrounds. Always restore first, then colorize. The AI does a much better job adding color to a clean, sharp photo. Learn more about colorizing black-and-white photos.

Optional: for your favorite restored photos, try the Animate feature. It turns a still photo into a short video where the person gently moves, blinks, or smiles. You can choose styles like "Come to Life" (gentle natural movement) or "Cinematic" (slow camera push like in a movie). Each animation costs 3 credits. These make great gifts for family members.