How much does photo restoration cost? A retoucher, an app or AI, compared

The short answer

Published price lists from restoration services in 2026 mostly fall into three bands: around $25 to $50 a photo for light damage such as fading and a few scratches, around $50 to $150 for moderate work like creases, stains and colour casts, and more again for severe damage, missing corners or a face that has to be rebuilt. Scanning is often charged on top. Pay-per-photo AI sits at a few dollars a photo, and subscription apps charge by the week or month whether you restore one photo or a hundred.

Which one you need depends on the damage, not on the price. Most family photos have fading, scratches and creases, and that is where AI is now good enough. Heavy damage is where a person is still worth paying.

What a professional restorer charges, and why

A restorer prices by the hour behind the job. Light fading takes minutes; a torn portrait with a missing eye can take an afternoon of careful painting, because the restorer has to rebuild what isn't there from what is. That is why quotes vary so widely, and why most services ask to see the photo before giving a firm price.

• Worth it for: missing pieces, burns, water damage across a face, mould, and photos for a large framed print.
• Also worth it for: archives, museums and anything where every detail must be documented, not guessed.
• Expect: a quote first, a few days to a few weeks of turnaround, and a revision or two included.

Photo labs and scanning services

Many photo labs offer restoration as an add-on to scanning. That's convenient when you have a box of prints: they scan everything, then fix the photos you choose. Check the price per scan as well as the price per restoration, since a large batch adds up quickly. If you'd rather scan at home, our guide on how to scan old photos gets you clean files with a phone or a flatbed.

Apps and subscriptions

Restoration apps often start with a free trial and then switch to a weekly or monthly subscription. That is good value if you have hundreds of photos to work through in one go, and poor value if you have five photos for a birthday. Read the renewal terms before you start the trial, and cancel once the album is done. Our round-up of AI photo restoration apps compares how they charge.

Pay-per-photo AI: what it handles, and what it doesn't

• Handles well: fading, yellowing and colour casts, dust and scratches, creases and fold lines, small tears, soft focus.
• Handles with care: heavy grain, faces that are small in the frame, photos of photos.
• Can't do honestly: rebuild a missing face, read text that has gone, or recover detail that was never in the print.

When too much is missing, AI fills the gap with something plausible, and plausible isn't the same as true. Always compare the result with the original, keep the original scan, and use a person for the photos where a guess would hurt.

Restoring a photo on Dromana

Dromana restores a photo and then brings it to life as a 5-second clip, priced per photo and paid once, with no subscription. A new account's first two videos are free. The steps:

1. Step 1

   Restore

   Upload the scan to restore old photos. It fixes fading, colour casts, scratches and creases and keeps every face as it was.

2. Step 2

   Colourise if you want

   For black-and-white prints, colourise old photos adds natural colour.

3. Step 3

   Bring it to life

   Use bring old photos to life for a gentle clip: a blink, a smile, a turn of the head.

Our step-by-step guide to restoring old photos with AI covers the details, and prices are on the pricing page.

How to decide

• A few faded or scratched family photos for a gift or a slideshow: pay-per-photo AI.
• A whole box of prints to digitise: a scanning service, then AI for the ones that need fixing.
• A badly damaged portrait, a missing piece or a large framed print: a professional restorer.
• A family archive you want preserved as it is: scan everything at high resolution first, restore copies, never the originals.