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AI photo restoration costs about 2 dollars and takes 3 minutes. Professional restoration costs 85-125 dollars and takes days. Here is how to decide.
I restore a lot of old photos. Scratches, fading, dust spots — the photo restorer handles those. But sometimes the damage is too severe. A tear that removed part of the image. Water damage that warped the paper. A face half missing. When the AI hits its limits, it is time to call a professional.
Here is how to know which path to take — and what to expect from each.
Moderate scratches, dust spots, color fading, mild discoloration. These are 80 percent of old photo problems and the AI handles them in 15-30 seconds for about 1 dollar in credits. The result is often indistinguishable from professional work for these common issues.
Missing sections. If a chunk of the photo is physically gone — torn off, burned, dissolved — the AI has to guess what was there. It guesses based on surrounding context, but it is still guessing. A professional restorer can reconstruct missing faces by referencing other photos of the same person, or by understanding facial anatomy well enough to fill in plausible features. The AI cannot do this.
Water damage. Water warps paper and creates uneven staining that the AI struggles to normalize. A professional can physically restore the print before scanning, or use advanced digital techniques that go beyond AI inpainting.
Severe damage with sentimental value. If it is the only photo of a deceased relative, and the damage is severe, pay the professional. The 85 to 125 dollars is worth the guarantee of the best possible result.
Try AI first. For under 2 dollars, you get a restored photo in seconds. If the result is good enough, you are done. If not, you have a scan ready to send to a professional — and the AI result can serve as a reference for what the restored photo should look like. You lose nothing by trying.
For the best AI results: start with a 600 DPI scan, run photo restoration in Auto mode first, then Face Pro if the photo has faces, then colorize if it is black and white, then upscale to 2x or 4x for archiving. Total cost: about 2 dollars and 3 minutes of your time.