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Remove scratches from a photo free

By ShinobiTools Team · Last updated: July 2026

Old prints pick up scratches, cracks and creases. Upload the photo and PicReviver rebuilds the surrounding detail so that damage softens and fades into the picture. Free, no account.

Restore a photo now →

How the tool handles scratches and cracks

PicReviver isn't a manual clone-stamp editor where you paint over each scratch by hand. Instead, its restoration pass rebuilds and sharpens the detail around a mark, and because fine scratches and surface cracks are thin and sit on top of otherwise-intact detail, the model usually blends them down so they're far less noticeable, while faces, fabric and background come back sharper at the same time.

• Fine scratches and hairline cracks: usually soften a lot
• Creases and fold lines across a print: often blend down noticeably
• Surface dust and speckle: typically reduced as detail is rebuilt
• Colour blotching from age: try the colourise pass afterwards for faded prints

Get the best starting point

Damage repair lives or dies on the quality of the copy you feed in. A clean, high-resolution scan gives the model far more real detail to rebuild from than a hurried phone snap of the print under a lamp. It's worth doing this once, properly.

1. Scan the print at 600 DPI, or take a flat, evenly-lit phone photo of it, our scanning guide covers this.
2. Open PicReviver and drop the scan in.
3. Let the restoration pass rebuild the detail and soften the scratches.
4. Compare before and after, then download the cleaned-up copy.

What it can and can't do

Be realistic about what any restoration tool can do. PicReviver rebuilds and sharpens detail that is still present in the photo; it is not a clone-stamp or inpainting editor. Fine cracks, creases and small blemishes usually soften noticeably because the surrounding detail gives the model enough to work with, but a chunk that is physically gone, such as a torn-away corner or an area dissolved to blank paper, can't be invented from nothing. Very heavy motion blur or a deeply out-of-focus shot also has hard limits.

So: thin scratches, cracks and creases over intact detail are exactly the sweet spot and usually improve a lot. A deep gouge that has removed the emulsion, or a section physically torn away, leaves nothing for the model to rebuild from, and no honest tool can paint back a face that isn't there any more. For an all-round faded-and-scratched print, the combined restore old photos flow is the place to start.

Not every scratch is the same damage

Prints collect several different kinds of marks, and they respond very differently to a rebuild pass. It is worth looking at the print under a raking light before you scan, because the light tells you which you have.

• Surface dust and speckle sits on the emulsion and hasn't damaged it. The easiest case, and much of it can be brushed off before scanning.
• Fine emulsion scratches are thin lines where the surface was scuffed. Intact detail runs right up to both sides, so a rebuild pass has plenty to work with and these usually soften a great deal.
• Deep gouges have removed the emulsion down to the paper base. There is no image left in that line, so what you get is a plausible fill, not a recovery.
• Fold and crease lines are a hybrid: cracked emulsion along a straight line, often with a slight brightness shift on one side. They blend down noticeably but rarely vanish, and a crease through a face stays visible.
• Tape and album-adhesive marks aren't scratches at all: they are a chemical stain in the paper. Treat them like discolouration rather than damage — a colour pass often does more for them than a sharpening pass.

Five minutes before you upload

Two cheap tricks remove more scratch than any model can, because they stop the scratch reaching the file in the first place.

• Dry-clean it. A soft brush or a puff of air lifts loose dust. Never water, alcohol or a damp cloth: the emulsion is gelatin and it will lift, and that turns removable dust into permanent damage.
• Rotate the print 90° on the scanner. A scanner lights the print from one direction, so a scratch running parallel to the scan line catches the light and glares, while the same scratch across the light almost disappears. Scan it both ways and keep the file where the scratch is faintest. This one habit routinely does more than any restoration pass.
• Scan at 600 dpi and don't sharpen in the scanner software. Let the model see the honest image; scanner sharpening bakes in halos around every scratch.

Then upload, and judge the result where the scratch crosses something important. A scratch across sky or a plain wall will effectively disappear because the model knows what belongs there. The same scratch across an eye or a line of text is exactly where you should look twice: what you're seeing there is reconstruction, and on faces and lettering it can be confidently wrong.

Common questions