← Free tools

Can this photo be restored, or does it need capturing again first?

Restoration repairs what is still in the file. It cannot bring back what the copy lost. Drop the scan and this says which of the two you are looking at - before you pay anyone.

The photo is read on this page and never uploaded. That matters more here than on any other tool we have.

What it measures, and why those four things

Four numbers come off the file itself. Effective DPI is the pixel count divided by the print size you picked - the single number that decides whether there is anything to repair. Contrast range is the gap between the 5th and 95th percentile of brightness; when it collapses, that is fading. Sharpness is the variance of a Laplacian, the standard cheap blur signal. Glare is the largest connected patch of blown-out pixels, because a scattering of white specks is harmless and a single reflection is not.

What it deliberately does not try to detect

Scratches, tears, mould and a missing face are checkboxes, not detectors. A heuristic guesses at those and a person holding the print does not, so asking is simply more accurate - and it keeps the verdict honest rather than confident.

The line that matters

Everything on the repairable list is still in the pixels: fading, casts, scratches, stains. Everything on the re-capture list is missing from them: glare erased the emulsion under it, shake destroyed detail the print still has, and 90 dpi across a face never recorded one. No tool repairs the second kind - it can only invent a replacement, which for a photograph of a person is the failure, not the feature. That boundary is drawn in full in what restoration must never invent.

Once the capture is right: restoration repairs the damage, colorization does the same pass in colour, and the print size checker tells you how big the result can be printed. For what a box of prints costs either way, the cost calculator prices it both ways.

The damage is repairable. The face stays the face.

Restoration and colorization run at 10 credits a photo and your first two are free. A second tone is another thirty cents, so you can order the faithful version and a warmer one and keep the one that looks like the room you remember.

Try Phoxel - from $6 See all niches

Other free tools

Marketplace image resizer Resize and pad any photo to Amazon, Etsy, Shopify or Airbnb’s published dimensions, and check it against their limits before you upload. Virtual staging watermark Burn a compliant “Virtually staged” label onto a listing photo - wording, placement and size, at full resolution. Menu photo checker Checks a dish photo against Uber Eats’ and DoorDash’s published limits, plus brightness and blur - their two stated rejection reasons. White background checker Measures your background’s actual RGB value and how much of the frame the product fills - the two things Amazon rejects main images for. Photographer vs AI calculator Work out what a shoot costs per product versus generating the same set with credits, including the cheapest pack combination. EXIF & GPS remover Strips location and camera metadata out of a photo before you post it. Shows you what was in there first. Shot list generator The angles worth shooting for your category, as a checklist you can copy onto your phone before you start. Photo cropper Crop a photo to a marketplace or social ratio right here - drag the box, download the file. Nothing leaves your device. Print size checker How large can this photo be printed? Real PPI for every common photo and A-series size, read straight from the file. Golden hour calculator Sunrise, sunset, both golden hours and the twilight window for any place and date - the week ahead at a glance. LinkedIn photo checker Scores a profile photo on resolution, exposure, sharpness and background, and shows it at the three sizes LinkedIn actually displays. Before / after maker Turn two photos into a comparison worth posting - a frozen slider, a side-by-side, or a story-sized stack.