Old photo restoration: AI or a retoucher?

Is AI enough to restore an old photo?

Often, yes: for a faded, grainy or slightly blurred photo with tired-looking faces, automatic restoration gives a good result in seconds. It is not enough when part of the picture has gone.

So the real question is not 'AI or human?' in general, but 'what is wrong with my photo?'. The table further down sorts the most common problems.

What does automatic restoration do well?

It fixes problems that affect the whole picture evenly: grain, noise, JPEG compression, light blur, washed-out contrast. It also rebuilds faces and can colourise a black and white photo.

In Souvenotte, specifically:

• contrast gently recovered, on brightness only;
• photo enlarged 2× (up to 3,200 px on the long side) and cleaned;
• every detected face rebuilt and blended back in;
• automatic colourisation when the photo has no colour, or on request;
• the same treatment for up to 20 photos uploaded at once.

When is a retoucher the better choice?

When something that is no longer there has to be recreated: a tear, a sharp crease, a long scratch, a missing corner, a stain over a face. Souvenotte does not fill those areas; a retoucher redraws them by hand.

A person is also the right call for an exact colour (a uniform, a dress), for removing or adding someone, or for a tiny or sharply turned face the tool does not detect. For physical damage, see also repairing a damaged photo.

How do the two ways of working differ?

AI applies the same treatment to the whole photo, asks no questions and returns the result in seconds. A retoucher works area by area, can ask you for details and can use other photos of the same person as a reference.

That care comes with a cost and a turnaround that vary a lot between professionals, so ask for a quote on your actual photo. AI, for its part, can smooth a detail or reinterpret a feature; we explain this in does AI change faces?.

Can you combine AI and a retoucher?

Yes, and it is often the most efficient route. A retoucher can fill the tear, then automatic restoration deals with grain, faces and colour; or the other way round, depending on how the professional prefers to work.

Either way, Souvenotte's free preview shows you what the automatic pass already fixes, which narrows down what you need to ask for. If you colourise, remember the colours are imagined: see the real colours of old photos.

How should you prepare a photo for a retoucher?

Supply a good scan and do not edit it yourself: common practice is 600 dpi for a photo you want to enlarge. Keep the original flat, with no sticky tape and no cleaning with water.

Add anything that helps: other photos of the same person, what you know about the colours, and what you want at the end (a print, a frame, a file). For scanning well, see what resolution to scan photos at.