Repair a damaged photo free, online

Faded, cracked, creased or water-stained?

Upload the photo, paint over the damage, and PicReviver fills it in from the surrounding detail, free.

By Sam Ridder · Last updated: September 2026

Only what you paint over gets touched. The rest of your photo comes back pixel for pixel identical: we measured it. Full size, no watermark, no account.

Damage gone but the photo still soft or faded? Run it through the restore & sharpen tool afterwards.

No app, no prompt, no account

The repair tool above runs in the browser: open it, paint over the damage and download the result, with no install, no account and no credit card. That makes it a damaged photo repair online free of the usual catches, and the result downloads without watermark. Old damaged photos with cracks, creases or light stains are what it is built for. Behind the brush is a trained model that fills the painted area from the surrounding detail; there is no prompt to write and nothing to describe to a chatbot. You do not need a photo repair app for this: the repair runs in the browser tab you already have open.

One upload, several repairs

Most damaged prints have more than one thing wrong at once: they are faded and soft and a bit scratched. The tool on this page handles the physical damage you paint over (scratches, tears, stains, glare), and you can tick "Also restore faces" or "Also add color" to run those passes in the same go. For general softness and fading, the automatic restore pass is the better first step, and you can chain the other tools on the same photo afterwards.

Restore & sharpen rebuilds soft, faded, low-detail areas
Restore faces brings blurry faces in old group shots back into focus
Colourise adds natural colour to a black & white or heavily-faded print
Scratches, cracks and creases soften as the surrounding detail is rebuilt (more on scratches)

How to repair a damaged photo

Start from the best copy you can: a clean scan of the print rather than a phone snap under a lamp gives the model far more to work with. Then let each pass do its job and compare before and after at every step.

Scan or photograph the damaged print (see the scanning guide).
Open the repair tool above, paint over the damage and press "Repair it".
If faces are soft, switch to face restore; if it's black & white, try colourise.
Compare, choose your size and download; the photo is then wiped.

Being clear about damage

Be realistic about what repair can do. The brush fills the area you paint over with new pixels predicted from what surrounds it, and leaves everything else untouched. That works very well on thin cracks, creases, spots and small tears, where the surroundings tell the model what belongs there. The easy case is image damage that sits in a few small areas; damage across the whole surface, like heavy fading, belongs to the automatic restore pass. On a large missing area it still fills the hole, but with something plausible rather than what was really there: fine for a patch of sky or wall, not for a missing face. When you repair picture damage such as a crease, paint over all of it, because the brush only fills what you paint.

Automatic restoration sharpens surviving detail. Stains need the separate repair brush; complete removal is not guaranteed; detail that is physically gone can't be recreated truthfully. If your main problem is age-fading rather than physical damage, read why old photos fade and start with the restore old photos flow.

Repairing damaged photo files without installing software

Digital files work the same way as prints: upload the file, paint over what is damaged, download. There is no installer: the repair runs on our own server, and the photo is deleted right after processing and the result within 45 minutes. As an online photo repair tool it also has no local shop behind it, so there is no address to visit. Unlike photo repair software you install and learn, the repair here is a brush stroke over the damage, and the model does the filling.

A damaged black and white photo can go through colourising afterwards if you also want colour back. Damaged photographs recovered from a backup are repaired the same way as any other file. Sun and water damage respond well when the fading or staining sits on top of surviving detail; the water damage page covers that specific case in more depth.

If it's a photographed document page with an uneven shadow across it rather than a damaged photo, ScanReviver's shadow remover is the better fit: it evens out the lighting a hand or phone casts across the page.

How the repair model works

The model behind the brush was trained to fill in masked-out areas of ordinary photos, not on damaged photos as such, which is why a tear you paint over comes back better here than through a general sharpener. Most ai photo restoration tools handle mild fading well and struggle on a real tear; this one is aimed squarely at physical damage such as creases, tears, stains and missing corners. Old photo restoration of softness and fading is a separate pass. This kind of ai photo repair is inpainting: the model predicts the painted pixels from the ones around them, so a missing corner of plain background usually comes back convincingly. That also makes it a narrower ai photo restoration tool than the restore pass: it changes only what you paint, and nothing else in the picture.

This picture repair works best around small damage, because the model has plenty of surrounding detail to go on. Torn photos are the hardest case, since the paper is missing exactly where the tear runs deepest. An old damaged photo with a small tear or a light crease responds particularly well, while a damage photo with a large missing section gets a plausible fill rather than the original. To fix photo damage on a scanned print, start from the best scan you can make: an even scan from a flatbed scanner gives the model more to work with than phone scans under a lamp.

Repairs are free: ten a day, at full resolution, with no watermark and no card. That makes it free photo restoration for physical damage, not just fading, and photo restoration online free with nothing to install. The AI is the same on the free tier and with a pass; a pass only raises the number of repairs a day. It is a photo AI free to use on any damaged photos, and each photo restore or image repair takes a few seconds, so you can restore photo after photo from the same box.

Torn photo restoration works well right up to the edge of the tear, and stops being reliable exactly where the paper is physically missing. Even a badly damaged photo is worth trying, since the model uses whatever detail survives nearby; a fully missing section gets filled, but not recovered.

Sources

Inpainting: Inpainting fills damaged image areas from surroundings

Common questions

What kinds of damage can it repair?

Scratches, cracks, creases, small tears, spots, stains and glare that you paint over are filled from the surrounding detail. Faces and colour can be added in the same go with the two tick boxes.

Can it fix a torn or missing piece?

It can fill it, but it can't bring the original back. A small tear or a missing corner of plain background usually comes back convincingly, because the surroundings show what belongs there. A missing face or object gets a plausible fill, not what was really there; no tool can do that.

Can it remove glare or a reflection from a photo?

Yes. Press the "Remove glare" button above the repair tool: it switches to a smaller, more precise brush so you can paint just the reflection, off glass, a lens or eyeglasses, without touching the photo around it, then press "Repair it".

Can I run several repairs on the same photo?

Yes. Tick "Also restore faces" or "Also add color" before pressing Repair it, and if something is left, paint over it and repair again on the result.

Is my damaged photo kept?

No. It's deleted right after processing and the result wiped within 45 minutes. See privacy.

Is this free, and do I need software like Photoshop?

It is free and runs in the browser: ten repairs a day at full resolution, no watermark, no account and nothing to install. A desktop photo editor can do the same job by hand with a healing brush; here the model does the filling for you.

Can it fix a print that has faded almost completely?

Not with the brush: fading covers the whole photo, so the automatic restore pass is the right tool for it. A print faded to pure white has nothing left to rebuild from.

Does it fix damaged photos from more than one source: scans, phone photos, screenshots?

Yes: it works on any digital image file, whether it came from a flatbed scanner, a phone camera pointed at a print, or an old screenshot of one.

Can it repair damaged photos in a batch, not just one at a time?

Not with the paint-over repair on this page: it works on one photo at a time. The automatic restore pass on the PicReviver homepage takes up to five at once on the free tier.

Is water damaged photo restoration realistic for a badly stained print?

Often, yes. Stains can be painted over and filled, and water staining usually softens detail rather than destroying it outright. A print that's stuck together or where the emulsion has lifted away is a physical problem no software fixes.

How to make an old photo look new?

Do it in layers: paint over cracks and stains with the repair brush, then use the automatic restore pass for fading and softness, and add color only if you want it. The result is cleaner and sharper, but it is a rebuilt version of the original, not a new photo.