Restore a Blurry Old Photo

How it works

1. 1

   Upload the best scan you can make

   Scan the print at the highest resolution your scanner offers, or photograph it flat in even daylight — JPG, PNG, or WebP up to 7MB. A soft print photographed with a shaky phone adds a second blur on top of the first, and the AI cannot separate the two.

   Expect: Be honest with yourself about which blur you have. Soft focus or slight motion blur, where you can still make out eyes, a nose, and the shape of a mouth, recovers well — the detail is there, just spread out, and the AI pulls it back together. A face that is a featureless smudge is a different problem: there is no detail to recover, so anything the AI returns is a face it invented, and it will not be the person you remember. This tool is for the first kind. For the second, it is better to keep the original than to accept a stranger.
2. 2

   Describe the blur and what to protect

   Type what is wrong and what must not change: 'restore this blurry old photo — sharpen the soft focus and recover the natural detail in the faces, keeping everyone's features, expression, clothing, and the scene exactly as photographed.' Say whether it is soft focus or motion blur if you can tell; a streaked, doubled edge is motion, an evenly soft one is focus.

   Tip: Add 'do not invent detail that is not in the original' — it is the one line that keeps a deblur from turning into a redraw.

   Copy one of these to get started:

   Soft focus, features visible restore this blurry old photo — sharpen the soft focus and recover the natural detail in the faces, keeping everyone's features, expression, clothing, and the scene exactly as photographed

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   Slight motion blur reduce the slight motion blur in this old photo and restore the natural sharpness of the faces and clothing, without inventing any detail that is not already in the picture

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   Whole print slightly soft sharpen this old photo gently across the whole frame — bring back the fine detail in faces, hair, and fabric while keeping the film grain and the natural look of the print

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   Faces sharp, background stays soft recover the detail in the faces of this old photo and leave the background as soft as it is — do not sharpen or change anything except the people

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   3 more prompts

   Blurry and faded restore this old photo — sharpen the soft focus and recover the detail in the faces first, keeping the faded colours as they are for now

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   Small, low-resolution scan restore the detail in this small blurry scan of an old photo — sharpen the faces and clothing naturally, without inventing features or making anyone look like a different person

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   Protect one face in a group sharpen the soft focus in this old group photo and recover the detail in everyone's faces, but leave the woman on the far right exactly as she is

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3. 3

   Compare the faces against the original

   Put the result beside the original and look at the eyes, the shape of the nose, and the hairline. They should be the same person, only clearer. If a feature has moved, an expression has changed, or the face suddenly looks like a modern portrait, the AI has drawn rather than recovered — go back and add 'do not invent detail'.

4. 4

   Use a marker to protect one face

   In a group, the AI may sharpen the main subject and over-work a smaller face in the background. Tap a marker on that face and say 'leave this face as it is' — or on the main subject and say 'recover only this face'. Markers are optional and only for steering a specific spot.