The old photos you dig out at home almost always look the same: yellowed, blurry, creased and scratched — and on black-and-white ones you can barely make out the faces. When you want to build an album, send them to elders, or print and frame them, something’s always missing. Paying someone per photo costs money and takes time.
Now you can do it yourself with AI: upload an old photo and have it deblur, upscale, repair scratches, and even colourize black-and-white shots automatically. The trick: fix one goal at a time, step by step — sharpen first, then colourize, then enlarge — which is more controllable than a single “just fix it” and keeps the result closer to the original photo.
When to use it
Sorting a family album, making a birthday or memorial book for elders, printing old photos to frame, or sharing a blurry old group shot in the family chat — AI can rescue them.
How to do it
- Photograph or scan the old photo cleanly — keep it flat, evenly lit, no glare
- Open WHEE or Jimeng and upload it via the restore / image-to-image / editing feature
- Ask for one thing first — “sharpen and upscale” — then check the result
- Once happy, add “colourize the black-and-white naturally / repair this scratch / enlarge to higher resolution”, one step at a time
Weak vs strong
The left says nothing about what to fix or “keep the faces”, so AI may quietly change them; the right pins down deblur, scratch repair, keeping features and no over-smoothing, so it comes out sharp and still looks like them.
Copy-paste prompt
Restore this old photo. Goal:【deblur to HD / colourize the black-and-white / repair scratches and creases / upscale resolution】. Requirements: natural and realistic, keep the people’s features, expressions and composition unchanged, no over-smoothing, don’t alter their looks, colours【natural and undistorted】.
Worked examples
You get：A noticeably clearer, cleaner photo — faces and details are legible, presentable to send to elders or to print.
You get：The black-and-white shot becomes a natural colour photo and the people suddenly come alive — perfect for a memorial album.
Level up
- Step-by-step is safest: “sharpen” first, then “colourize”, then “upscale” — one goal at a time beats asking for everything at once
- Fix locally: mark a single scratch or area and say “only fix here, leave the rest”, preserving the original texture
- Bring it to life: after restoring, run it through an image-to-video tool so the person smiles or blinks gently — a moving keepsake
Common mistakes
- Asking for everything in one go — deblur + colourize + upscale + scratch repair at once gets messy and changes faces; split into steps
- Over-restoring until it’s not them — heavy smoothing and invented detail cause “face swap”; add “keep features and expression unchanged” and compare to the original
- A bad source shot — glare, tilt or darkness gives AI nothing to work from; clean up the re-shot/scan first
FAQ
Will the restored face stop looking like the real person?
Will the colourized colours be accurate?
Pro tip：Save the restored HD version as a new file — never overwrite your original scan. The original negative/scan is always the most valuable; the restored copy is just the “nice and usable” version.