Every Restoration Option Explained: What to Turn On, and When

When you upload a photo, Recolor the Past picks sensible defaults and shows you a free watermarked preview. You can still choose the extra fixes yourself. Here is what each launch option is for.

Colourise (black & white → colour)

Use this for black-and-white or sepia photos. It adds plausible, natural colour to skin, clothing, sky and surroundings so the picture feels like a living photograph again. It is a creative reconstruction, not proof of the original colours.

Improve faded colour

Use this only on photos that were already in colour but have faded, yellowed or shifted. It tries to rebalance the colour that is still present in the image instead of inventing a new palette.

Repair damage

Use this for scratches, dust, spots, creases and small tears. The repair pass builds a damage mask, fills marked areas from the surrounding picture, and protects detected faces so important features are not wiped away.

Improve faces

Use this for portraits where the faces are soft but still visible. It gently clarifies facial detail when the face is large enough to benefit. Tiny background faces are left alone to avoid an artificial look.

Reduce blur

Use this on slightly soft scans or shaky phone captures. It can recover a little edge clarity, but it cannot turn a heavily blurred photo into a sharp original.

Dewarp & crop

Use this for phone photos of printed photos, tilted scans and visible scanner borders. It combines straightening, perspective correction and border trimming into one simple option.

Auto tone & white balance

Use this when a photo is too flat, too dark, yellowed or colour-cast. It balances brightness, contrast and neutral tones before the final result is shown.

Reduce JPEG blocks and print dots

Use JPEG block reduction for old compressed files with square artefacts. Use print-dot reduction for magazine, newspaper or halftone scans where a visible dot pattern distracts from the image.

Which should I use?

• Old black-and-white family photo → Colourise, plus Improve faces for portraits.
• Scratched or dusty print → Repair damage.
• Faded 1970s colour snapshot → Improve faded colour and Auto tone & white balance.
• Phone photo of a print, taken at an angle → Dewarp & crop first.
• Scanned newspaper or magazine image → Reduce print dots.

Every paid full-resolution result shows the credit cost before you order. The watermarked preview is free, so you can test settings before downloading.