October 2, 2026

How to Restore and Colourise Old Photos With AI

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A sepia 1910 street photograph before and after AI colourisation and contrast repair

The short answer

Use the Restore tool in Nano ImageEdit 2.0 Online. It has two presets: Restore damage, which removes spots, scratches and stains and improves contrast, and Colorize, which adds natural colour and fixes the faded contrast. Both change the whole photo, so compare the result with your original.

Steps

Scan or photograph the print as flat and evenly lit as you can, then open the editor and add it.

Pick Restore.

Choose Restore damage for a damaged print, Colorize to add colour, or write your own instruction.

Press Generate.

Use the Tone / Hybrid / Raw buttons under the result to change how much of your original detail is kept. Switching needs no new edit and costs nothing.

Prices and times on this page are those of Nano ImageEdit 2.0 Online on the day it was written: 50 credits ($0.50) per finished edit, usually 30 to 50 seconds, with the first edit after a quiet period taking one to two minutes longer.

A real example

We colourised a public-domain photograph from 1910: a young newsboy at his stand, with a man, a woman and a second man standing nearby, taken at night. The instruction was "Colorize this old photograph with natural, realistic colors and fix the faded contrast."

The sepia tone became a range of colours: a tan hat, a grey striped suit, a blue-grey coat on the woman in the background, and warm wood on the newspaper stand. The composition, the people and the headline on the paper were unchanged. Because Restore changes the whole photo, it is not pixel-identical to the original the way an object edit is, and the editor does not claim it is. Use the Changes view, which shows a heat map of where new structure appeared, to see what was added.

What colourising cannot know

A black-and-white photograph does not record colour. The model chooses colours that are plausible for the scene, such as skin, wood, fabric and sky, and some of those choices will be wrong for the real day. Treat a colourised photograph as an interpretation. If a particular colour matters, such as a uniform or a flag, check it against another source before relying on it.

Tips for restoring damaged prints

Scan at a good resolution.: The editor works on up to 4096 px on the long side, so a larger scan is scaled down first.

Do restore first, then colourise,: as two edits, if the print is badly damaged. You can chain an edit from any earlier version.

Keep the original file.: Download the result as a PNG and keep your scan alongside it.

Cost

50 credits ($0.50) per finished edit; refunded if it fails or you cancel.

How to replace an object in a photo with AI

The photograph is "Jerald Schaitberger of 416 W. 57th St. N.Y. who helps an older boy sell papers until 10 P.M. on Columbus Circle" (Library of Congress, cph.3a01149), in the public domain.

Try it on your own photo

Nano ImageEdit 2.0 Online costs 50 credits ($0.50) per edit, and an edit that fails is refunded. New accounts get free credits.

Open Nano ImageEdit 2.0 Online