Photo Restoration Online Free — CodeFormer or Local
Two honest paths. Local analyse heals fade, colour cast and small scratches in this tab — nothing leaves your device. CodeFormer AI can restore detectable faces only after you consent; the photo is sent through our server to Hugging Face for processing and is not stored by PixelAndPDF. Completely missing emulsion still cannot be invented.
How to use the photo restoration online free
- Drop a JPG, PNG or WebP scan (convert HEIC to JPG first if the file is from an iPhone).
- For faces: tick the Hugging Face warning, then Restore faces with CodeFormer. The photo is relayed through our server to Hugging Face — not stored here. For fade only: use the local sliders — nothing is uploaded.
- Compare before/after and download. Keep the original file; AI faces are guesses.
Photo restoration online free — what a browser can honestly do
Searches for photo restoration online free, damage photo repair online free, and photo restoration software usually mean a washed-out shoebox scan: grey midtones, yellowed paper glare, and a little scanner dust. Those problems are mostly global tone and high-frequency noise. This in-tab studio can lift shadows, restore contrast, pull highlights, and apply a small-kernel soften plus unsharp-style sharpen without sending the file to a GPU farm.
Photo restoration AI that reconstructs a missing eye needs a GPU model. This page offers CodeFormer — the free official Hugging Face Space — only after consent, because the photo is relayed through our server to Hugging Face. The local path stays canvas-only: levels, colour-cast correction and neighbour-fill for small scratches, with no upload.
Restore contrast on scanned photos without crushing the paper
Flatbed scans of silver prints often sit in a narrow histogram. Raising contrast alone can clip the paper white and crush the darkest coat lapel. Shadow lift and highlight pull are gentler: they move the darks up and the brightest paper down before you add contrast, which is closer to how a restorer would set levels. Brightness is there for underexposed camera-phone copies of album pages.
If the print was meant to be monochrome, switch to black and white so leftover scanner colour cast does not masquerade as “restored” pigment. Warm print is a slight sepia bias for people who want the look of an old darkroom print — it is a tone map, not automatic colourise. Keep colour when the original already has dyes you want to preserve.
Soften specks and sharpen old photographs without pretending to inpaint
Scanner dust and film grain show up as tiny bright or dark specks. A 3×3 mix toward a box blur reduces that chatter. It will not erase a long scratch across a cheek; advertising that as AI scratch removal would be a lie. Use a light soften, then sharpen so edges that the blur rounded come back. If you over-sharpen a noisy scan you will get halos — turn sharpen down before you export.
The working canvas caps the long edge at 2400 pixels so the pixel passes stay interactive on a laptop and a phone. That is enough for sharing, family archives, and most print-at-home sizes. If you need a museum-grade 600 dpi TIFF, keep the original scan and treat this JPEG as a viewing copy.
Straighten, compare, and export a private JPEG
Album photos are rarely square to the scanner glass. A ±15° rotate is enough to straighten a typical desk scan without a full crop tool. The before/after slider is there because enhancement is easy to overdo: if the “after” looks crunchy, back off contrast and sharpen until both sides feel like the same photograph, only clearer.
Export is JPEG at high quality with EXIF stripped — the same privacy story as compressing an image on this site. GPS from a phone copy of granny’s portrait does not ride along. There is no watermark and no signup between the slider and the download.
Old photo enhancer with no upload — and what to use next
Files stay in the tab. After the page has loaded you can disconnect and still enhance. That matters for family archives you would not drop on a random restore SaaS. iPhone HEIC scans should go through HEIC to JPG first; this studio accepts JPEG, PNG and WebP. If the enhanced file is still too heavy for email, compress the image on the dedicated compressor rather than crushing quality here.
Related conversions (JPG to PNG, HEIC to JPG) are separate URLs on purpose: one job per page. Use CodeFormer only when you accept relay to Hugging Face. The local sliders never send the file.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Local fade repair never leaves the tab. CodeFormer AI is also free (Hugging Face Space) but only after you consent to relay through our server. No PixelAndPDF signup either way.
Yes. Damage photo repair online free on this tool is fade, contrast, speckle soften and sharpen in the tab. Nothing is sent to PixelAndPDF servers.
Lift shadows a little, pull harsh paper highlights down, then raise contrast. That sequence usually beats a single contrast slider on a washed-out scan.
Yes — there is a sharpen slider after an optional speckle soften. Use a light touch so grain does not turn into halos.
The optional path is CodeFormer, the same class of neural face restore as GFPGAN, run on Hugging Face’s free Space via our server when you consent. Local enhance is still canvas-only.
Local enhance never leaves the tab and strips EXIF. CodeFormer is relayed to Hugging Face through our server; PixelAndPDF does not store it. Keep the original either way.
No. You can keep colour, convert to black and white, or apply a warm print tone. Automatic colourise is not offered here.
Convert HEIC to JPG first on this site, then drop the JPEG here. The studio accepts JPG, PNG and WebP.
Soften and sharpen walk every pixel. Capping the working size keeps the enhancer usable on phones instead of freezing the tab on a 40-megapixel scan.
Yes. Open the page, pick a scan from the library, adjust the sliders, compare before and after, and save the JPEG.
Related tools
- Compress Image Online FreeShrink JPG, PNG or WebP files before email, WhatsApp or a form upload.
- HEIC to JPG ConverterDrop in the .heic photos your iPhone saved and get standard .jpg files back in a second or two.
- JPG to PNG ConverterConvert JPG files to PNG when you need a format that supports transparency, survives repeated editing, or is required by a tool that refuses JPG.
- PNG to JPG ConverterPNG screenshots and exports are often needlessly large for sharing by email or uploading to a form.
Runs entirely in your browser — your files and text never leave this device. Last reviewed August 15, 2026.