Photo restoration, done in 24 hours
Faded. Stained. Creased down the middle.
Back in your inbox tomorrow. Print ready. Her face untouched.
BeforeAfterIt gets a little worse every year, and you are the only one who can stop it.
- Back within 24 hours
- You never post the original
- Full refund if you do not love it
- Files deleted after 30 days
Already decided? Order one restoration, $34
There is a box somewhere in your house.
A shoebox, a biscuit tin, or a carrier bag from a shop that closed years ago. You have been meaning to do something about it since the funeral.
And every time you lift the lid you notice the same thing. She is a little further away than last time. A crease has found her face. The colour has gone flat and orange. The one good photograph of her is the one that got handled the most, which is exactly why it is the most damaged.
You are the only person left who is going to do anything about it. Which is precisely why the lid keeps going back on.
Then it comes back, and she is looking straight at you again. Not smoothed. Not prettied up. Not someone who resembles her. Her. And you send it to your brother, and to your kids, and the person who was quietly disappearing is in the room again.
That is the entire job. It takes 24 hours and $34.
The thing you are actually worried about
Will it still look like her?
This is the question everybody asks, and they are right to ask it. If you have ever run an old photograph through a free app, you have felt that small lurch: the damage is gone, the skin is suspiciously smooth, and the woman looking back at you is not quite your grandmother.
We do not do that. No smoothing, no beautifying, no straightening teeth, no changing anyone's age, no inventing an eye that was never in the photograph. We repair what is damaged and we leave the person alone.
And we tell you what we could not fix
Restoration is repair, not invention. Sometimes a photograph is so far gone that detail is genuinely missing, and somebody has to make a judgement about what belongs there.
When that happens, we say so. Every restoration comes back with a short note in plain words: here is what was repaired, and here is the one part we had to interpret. Nobody else in this business does that, and it is the reason you can trust the file we send you.
And if a face is missing rather than damaged, we tell you before you pay and we decline the order. Handing you a convincing stranger would be worse than handing you nothing.
Three steps, and two of them are ours
No app to download, no account to create, no scanner, and you never put the original in the post.
Send us a phone picture
Lay the print flat, use daylight rather than the flash, keep your shadow off it and fill the frame. Email it to us, or order first and simply reply to your confirmation email with the photo attached.
We repair it
Tears, creases, water damage, mould spotting, fading, scratches and colour shift. We recover the detail in the faces and add natural, period accurate colour if you asked for it.
It lands in your inbox
Within 24 hours. A high resolution file that prints cleanly at 8 x 10, plus a smaller copy for your phone and the family group chat. Two rounds of changes included.
Yours is probably not too damaged
People send us photographs apologising for the state of them, including ones another service has already turned down. The bad ones are the ones that get the biggest reaction when they come back.
- Creases, cracks and tears, including photos torn and taped back together
- Water damage, mould spotting and brown staining
- Fading, yellowing and that orange 1970s colour shift
- Scratches, dust and surface dirt
- Photographs stuck to glass, or stuck to each other
- Very small, very soft or badly focused prints
- Black and white photographs you would like to see in colour
- Photos where only one face matters and the rest can go
What it costs
Hand retouching studios charge from around $75 to $300 a photograph and take two to three weeks. We are faster and far cheaper, and further down this page we explain exactly why, because you should know that before you buy.
One Photo
$34
Back within 24 hours
- One photograph fully restored
- Natural colourisation included, never a separate charge
- Print ready at 8 x 10, plus a phone copy
- Two rounds of changes
The Family Set
$89
$170 5 photos, back within 48 hours
- Five photographs restored
- Less than the price of three singles
- The one to pick for a slideshow, a memorial, or a gift every sibling gets a copy of
- Two rounds of changes on each
The Legacy Collection
$199
$510 15 photos, back within 5 days
- Fifteen photographs restored
- Files named and dated the way you tell us
- The whole box, handled
- Priority queue
Why people pick us
There are three other ways to get an old photograph repaired. Here is where each of them beats us, and where we beat them.
Against a hand retoucher
A master retoucher spends hours with a stylus and charges $75 to $300 for it, and on a truly wrecked photograph, one where a face is half missing, they will beat us. We are not going to pretend otherwise. But that is not the photo in your box. Yours is faded, creased, stained, torn at the corner, gone orange. On that photo you will not see the difference, and you pay $34 instead of $150 and wait a day instead of three weeks. If yours turns out to be one of the hard ones, we will tell you before you pay, and we will tell you to find a retoucher.
Against the local photo shop
You would have to drive there, hand the only picture of your mother across a counter to somebody you have never met, and come back in two weeks to collect it. Twice in the car for one photograph. Here you take a picture of it with your phone, on your kitchen table, and the original never leaves the house.
Against the free AI apps
They feed your photo to a model and hand back whatever falls out. Nobody looks at it. That is why so many people end up staring at a smoothed, brightened stranger who is almost their grandmother. We do two things those apps structurally cannot: a person compares the finished file against your original before it is sent, and you get a note in plain words saying what was repaired and what had to be interpreted. And when a photo cannot be restored honestly, we say no and refund you. An app never says no. It just guesses.
| Restored Keepsakes | Hand retoucher | Local photo shop | Free AI app | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price per photo | $34 | $75 to $300 | Often $50 and up | Free to a few dollars |
| How long | 24 hours | 2 to 3 weeks | Days to weeks | Seconds |
| Colour included | Yes, never extra | Varies, ask them | Varies, ask them | Yes |
| Do you leave home | No, a phone picture by email | No | Yes, twice | No |
| Does the original leave your hands | Never | Sometimes | Yes | Never |
| Does a person check it | Every single file | Yes | Yes | No |
| Do they tell you what they changed | Yes, in writing | Rarely | Rarely | No |
| If it cannot be saved honestly | We refuse the order and refund you | Usually flagged first | You find out at the counter | It guesses anyway |
On a phone, slide the table sideways to see every column.
The part most companies leave out
We took the human out of the repair. We put one back at the end.
Every way of fixing a photograph has a failure mode. You are about to hand over the only picture you have of her, so it is worth knowing what each one is.
A retoucher's failure mode is variability, and it has nothing to do with skill. The good ones are genuinely brilliant. What you cannot order is a good day. You get whoever is at the desk, at whatever hour of whatever week, forty photographs into a backlog, with your deadline pressing on them. Same person, same talent, different result.
Ours does not have days. Photograph number one and photograph number four hundred go through the identical process, with the same patience on the same crease, at three in the morning or on a Sunday afternoon. Nobody is tired of your photograph. Nobody is hurrying it along to get home.
It also means your print never leaves your house and is never handled by a stranger. Nothing to post, nothing to lose in the mail, nothing sitting in a tray behind a counter with your surname on a sticky note.
And it copes with damage that is simply impractical by hand. Rebuilding film grain across a missing corner so that the repair does not announce itself is an afternoon's work with a stylus. Here it is one pass.
Now the part we are not going to hide
Our failure mode is invention. Left to itself this technology will smooth skin, straighten teeth, and confidently fill in a face it cannot actually see. That is real, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.
The difference is that our failure mode can be caught and the other one cannot. A person compares every finished file against your original before it goes anywhere near your inbox, looking for exactly that. Then every delivery arrives with a note in plain words: here is what was repaired, and here is the part, if any, we had to interpret.
You can check our work against the photograph you sent. Nobody can check a tired retoucher against a fresher version of himself.
We are also new. We do not have a wall of five star reviews yet and we are not going to invent one. Send us your photograph before you spend a penny, and judge the work with your own eyes.
If you do not love it, you do not pay for it
Tell us what is wrong and we redo it. Two rounds of changes are included on every photograph and there is no time pressure. If you still do not love it, we refund you in full within 14 days, in cash and not store credit, and you keep the files anyway.
We do not ask you to justify it and we do not make you send anything back.
Questions people ask
Do I have to post you the original photograph?
Never. You take a picture of it with your phone and email it to us. If you already have a scan, even better. The original never leaves your house.
Mine is really badly damaged. Is it worth it?
Send us a picture of it before you buy anything and we will tell you honestly. Badly damaged photographs are the ones that get the biggest reaction when they come back, and the ones we most enjoy doing. If another service has already told you it cannot be done, we would still like to see it.
Should I just use a free AI app instead?
Try one, honestly. If your photo is only a little faded, it may be all you need, and you should keep your $34.
The trouble starts with real damage: a crease through a face, a torn edge, a missing corner. Left alone, an app fills the gap with whatever it thinks belongs there and hands you back a smoothed, slightly wrong version of your grandmother, with nothing telling you which parts were invented. That is the whole reason this service exists.
Is there still somewhere local that does this?
Some camera shops and print labs still offer it, and if you have a good one nearby it is worth asking. What you are trading is time and your original: you drive there, you hand the only copy to somebody, and you come back in a week or two. Here you photograph it on your kitchen table and it never leaves the house.
Can I print it?
Yes. You get a high resolution file that prints cleanly at 8 x 10. If you want it bigger, tell us and we will tell you honestly whether your original can carry the size.
Who sees my photographs?
Only us, and only to do the work. We never sell them, never publish them, and never put them in an advert unless you tell us in writing that we may. Files are deleted 30 days after delivery, sooner if you ask.
I need it for a service on Saturday. Can you do that?
Yes. Say so when you send the photograph and we will work to your date. Rush delivery brings a single photo back within 12 hours, and if we miss the deadline the rush fee refunds itself automatically.
Can you make the photograph move?
We offer a short Memory Motion clip as an add on: six to eight seconds of gentle, natural movement. We never add speech and never put words in anyone's mouth. Some families love it and some find it hard to watch, and we refund it if it is not right for you.
Show us the worst one in the box
Take a picture of it with your phone and send it over. We will tell you honestly what we can do with it, before you spend anything. If we cannot save it, we will say so.
Working toward a memorial, a birthday or an anniversary? Tell us the date when you write and we will work to it.
A person reads every message, usually within a few hours, seven days a week.