How to Repair Scratched, Torn, and Creased Old Photos
Remove scratches, tears, creases, and stains from old photos without desktop software. How AI damage repair works and how to fix a damaged photo with Renew.
Why Physical Damage Was the Hardest Problem
Fading is uniform; damage is not. A scratch cuts across a face, a crease breaks a sky in two, a tear takes a corner of the scene with it. Fixing this by hand means reconstructing content that's physically gone — historically the most expensive part of professional restoration, billed by the hour.
AI inpainting solved exactly this: the model detects damaged regions, then fills them by reasoning from the surrounding image — the direction of the hair a scratch crosses, the texture of the wall a crease interrupts, the symmetry of a face a tear clips.
Repairing a Damaged Photo in Renew
- Photograph or scan the damaged print as flat as possible — smooth out what you can physically, gently.
- Open Renew and select the image.
- Tap the one-click restore. Damage detection and inpainting run automatically alongside color and sharpness correction.
- Inspect the previously damaged areas at full zoom — scratches through plain areas vanish completely; repairs across fine detail (eyes, text) deserve a close look.
- Save the repaired photo. Rerun with a better capture of the print if any repair looks soft.
What Repairs Best
- Scratches and dust: essentially solved — expect clean removal even across faces.
- Creases and fold lines: excellent results, including the white break lines on glossy prints.
- Small tears and missing corners: reconstructed convincingly when the missing region is a modest share of the image.
- Water stains and adhesive marks: handled well when the underlying image is still partially visible.
Preserve the Repair Properly
Once a photo is repaired, don't let the digital copy meet the fate of the print: keep the restored version in your photo library where it's backed up, and share copies with family. The physical print should go somewhere cool, dry, and dark — but the repaired digital version is now the master copy of the memory. For the full capture-and-restore workflow, see our guide to digitizing old photos.
Ready to Restore Your Old Photos?
Download Renew and restore, colorize, and enhance your old photos with a single tap.
