Top 3 Softwares To Repair Old Photos

Tips to repair old photos

We often have albums at home with analog photos of our family. Some of us save from our grandparents and great-grandparents and even go back further in time. And they really are authentic relics.

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But there is a problem with paper photos: they get damaged, scratched, and lose their authenticity and charm. We lose the relic, the memories of our ancestors. That is why it is important to digitize the photographs, repair old photos, restore them, and colorize the black and white images to recover the original charm and feel our family memories’ essence.

Also, for technical reasons, most of the old photos are black and white, which is not real to us somehow. This is why we need to color them to make them look more real and to feel history truly.

This article will find three perfect software to restore old photos and achieve their original quality.

3 Best Tools to Repair Old Photos

1. Photoshop

Photoshop is professional photo editing software available for Windows and Mac. It is a paid Adobe Inc. program for professional use.

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Adobe is a creative, marketing, and document management solutions provider. Creative Cloud offers a variety of tools and services, including Photoshop, Acrobat Pro, AI features in Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Lightroom, and more.

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It is a top-rated program among graphic editors, photographers, and other professionals who work with photographs and images. Mainly, its objective is the edition of these, and it offers results of the highest quality.

Photoshop is a widely known application that is used to colorize old photos. This tool gives you the facility to create stunning and photorealistic images. Of course, you can restore old pictures simply by applying the colorization effects of Photoshop.

As its goal is professional use, its interface looks very crowded and complex. It is not cheap nor an intuitive program; it is not prepared for people new to the world of image editing or photo restoration or coloring of black and white photos. It offers tons of perfectly customizable options to achieve the most customizable goals possible, but you must have prior skill and knowledge of the program to use it.

Although it is complicated to use, it can be learned from Internet tutorials or specific courses. Used well, you will achieve the highest possible quality results out of the market options. However, you will need to prepare a lot before using Photoshop to edit the image.

2. Picture Colorizer

Picture Colorizer is the free desktop software for restoring old pictures. It has a web version and a downloadable version. Both are free and super intuitive. Plus, they deliver high-quality results in seconds!

Picture Colorizer is a system that works with Artificial Intelligence to analyze and detect pixel by pixel the figures that make up the image. Thanks to this AI, the program has the ability to improve the errors it finds and autocomplete the images to get results as if you were viewing the original photographs. It can also colorize black and white pictures to give them a new life, a new perspective.

The interface is spotless and intuitive. It has a few buttons with which you can do everything you need to make your photos achieve the life you want to rediscover.

To use a picture colorizer to restore old photos, you will need to scan the images you want. If you don’t have a scanner at home, you can picture them with your mobile. The higher the quality of the digitized input version, the better the output quality will be. The application offers very high-quality results but requires a clear image input.

How to restore old photo
Restored old photo.

The best thing is that this application is super simple and intuitive. When you have it downloaded, you only have to open the application and press the “Add Images” button to upload the photo you want to restore. You can also simply drag and drop the image to the center of the screen.

With the “Inpaint” button, you can select the damaged part, then click “Apply,” and you will get the repaired version. If what you want is to color the image in black and white, you will only have to click the “Colourize!” button, and recoloring will begin.

With the tools in the column on the right, you can adjust some of the image parameters to improve its quality to your liking. You can edit the exposure, saturation, noise, and many other variables. Improve the result to your liking. And with the button on the bottom right, you can save the restored image. It’s super simple!

It is a program with a desktop and online version, completely free, and with a simple and intuitive interface.

Also, its operation could not be easier: you do not need a knowledge of image editing or paid programs; with a single click and an image at hand, you will have the job done in a matter of seconds. Work always has high-quality results, and work is done by an increasingly trained artificial intelligence to deliver top-quality results.

3. Inpaint

There are other applications and various alternatives with which you can restore old pictures automatically. Inpaint is one of them.

Inpaint also has an online trial and a desktop version. The online one has a maximum resolution of only 4.2 megapixels and limits the uploaded file’s weight. As for downloadable software, it is available for Windows and Mac for free. With the desktop version, you will get a higher quality with each result; there is no image size limitation.

This application’s interface is very similar to Picture Colorizer: it also has a clean and intuitive style, with a black background and a few buttons. It has more options at a glance than the other application, which can be a bit more confusing than Picture Colorizer because Inpaint allows you to edit irregularities manually rather than automatically as the other application does.

With the Magic Wand button, you must select all the irregularities that you find: scratches, breaks, folds, etc. Once you press the “Delete” button on the toolbar, the application will start the process. The system’s internal algorithm will do is erase them and fill in the gaps automatically, completing the photograph in a very organic way.

In conclusion

Photoshop is only a valid option if you are willing to pay for a high-quality program and have prior knowledge. If not, Picture Colorizer or Inpaint are the best options because they are free, easy to use, automatic, and deliver high-quality results in seconds.

Regarding them, both applications are very similar. Each of them has a free desktop version and another online version. The interface of both is intuitive, clear, elegant, and easy to use.

Still, Picture Colorizer is easier to use. It has fewer buttons and works with complete Artificial Intelligence that allows you to do all the restoration automatically without giving you extra work. Besides, its results have excellent quality and, not only that, but it also colorizes the black and white images to recover memories of life uniquely and impressively. The most important thing is that this program has a free version.

Both work well, they are good resources for restoring old images, but Picture Colorizer will offer undoubted quality results.

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