On-device AI • iPhone, iPad, Mac & Vision Pro

Old Photo Restorer: AI Repair

Scratches, tears, stains and faded faces - repaired on the photograph you already have, without sending it anywhere.

Scan a portrait from 1952, open it, press Auto Restore. Damage is healed to match the surrounding grain, faces come back into focus one at a time, and black and white turns into believable colour. What took a retoucher an afternoon takes about a minute.

Download on the App Store
iPhone, iPad, Mac & Vision Pro Scratch & tear repair Colourisation Nothing uploaded
Old Photo Restorer app icon

What It Actually Fixes

Five kinds of damage, each handled by a model trained for it rather than one filter applied to everything.

Scratches and cracks

Found automatically and healed without touching the rest of the picture. The repair matches the paper grain around it, so it does not read as a patch.

Stains, tears and worn corners

Damaged areas are rebuilt from the surrounding texture. Missing corners and creases across a face are the cases people assume are unrecoverable.

Faded and blurry faces

A dedicated face model works on each face separately, up to 16 in one photograph. It recovers the features that are there rather than inventing a new face.

Colour from black and white

Colourisation that understands skin, sky, fabric and foliage, so the result is plausible rather than tinted. Works on faded colour photos too.

Resolution

Enlarge a small scan for printing, with the restoration applied first so the model is not amplifying scratches into features.

Before and after

Every result sits beside the original. Restoration is a judgement call, and the comparison is how you make it.

Your family photographs never leave the device

Photo restoration usually means uploading pictures of your family to somebody's server. This one runs the models on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

  • No account, no sign-in, no upload.
  • Works with no network connection at all - on a plane, or in a room with a scanner and no Wi-Fi.
  • Originals are never modified. Every restoration is saved as a new file.
  • Nothing is kept after you close the app, and no telemetry is sent about what you restored.
16
Faces restored per photo
0
Photos uploaded
4
Platforms, one purchase
~1 min
Typical restoration

On Mac

The full workspace - batch a shoebox of scans, compare against the original, and export an archive copy alongside the restoration.

On iPad

A larger canvas for the side-by-side, which is where you actually decide whether a restoration went too far.

On iPhone

The one that gets used most - photograph a print at a relative's house and restore it before you have left the room.

Who Uses It

Mostly people with a box of prints and a scanner, and no intention of learning Photoshop.

Family archives

A shoebox of prints, scanned over a weekend and restored in an evening. Grandparents recognise faces they had stopped being able to see.

Gifts and anniversaries

A restored and colourised wedding photograph, printed and framed. The most common thing people tell us they made.

Local history

Societies and small museums working through donated photographs where the original is too fragile to handle repeatedly.

Genealogy

Faces sharp enough to compare across generations, which is often the point of the research in the first place.

Available On

One purchase, every platform. Requires iOS 17, iPadOS 17, macOS 14 or visionOS 1 and later.

iPhone

iOS 17.0 or later

iPad

iPadOS 17.0 or later

Mac

macOS 14.0 or later

Apple Vision Pro

visionOS 1.0 or later

Download on the App Store
Help & FAQ More photo tools Restoring family photos

Frequently asked questions

What kinds of damage can it repair?

Scratches and cracks, stains, tears and worn corners, and faded or blurry faces. Damaged areas are rebuilt from the surrounding texture so the repair matches the paper grain instead of reading as a patch.

Does it invent a new face when the original is faded?

A dedicated face model works on each face separately - up to 16 in one photograph - and recovers the features that are present rather than generating a different person.

Can it colourise black and white photographs?

Yes, with colourisation that understands skin, sky, fabric and foliage so the result is plausible rather than tinted. It also works on faded colour photos.

Do my family photographs leave the device?

No. Everything runs on device on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Vision Pro, and every result sits beside the original so you can judge the change.