Restore Scanned Photo — Fix Scan Artifacts and Enhance Quality
Restore scanned photos that suffer from scanning artifacts — moire patterns, dust spots, scan lines, color casts, and resolution limits. AI identifies and removes scan-specific issues while enhancing the underlying photo quality.
No credit card required • 1 free conversion • Instant results
Instant transformation • Zoom to see quality
Experience the Power of Vector Graphics
Zoom in, change colors, scale infinitely - all while maintaining perfect quality
⚠️ Quality loss at 10x zoom
✨ Perfect quality at 10x zoom
Retro Sunset Logo
Infinite Scalability
Zoom in 10x, 100x, or more - SVGs remain perfectly sharp at any size
Dynamic Styling
Change colors instantly with CSS - perfect for theming and branding
Optimized Files
Often smaller than raster images while being infinitely scalable
Why Choose Our Service?
Repairs scratches, tears, and stains
Repairs scratches, tears, and stains
Instant Processing
Process Scanned Photo files in under 10 seconds. No queue, no waiting — upload and get results immediately.
Restores faded colors
Restores faded colors
Full Resolution
Your Scanned Photo file is processed at full resolution. No downscaling, no quality loss, no watermarks.
Works with scans and phone photos
Works with scans and phone photos
Multi-Tool Platform
After processing, use our other AI tools — upscaling, restoration, vectorization — all in one platform with shared credits.
Everything You Need
Simple Pricing
1 credit per Scanned Photo file. Start with a free credit — no subscription required.
Get Started NowFrequently Asked Questions
What causes the rainbow wavy pattern on my scanned magazine photo?
That is a moire pattern, created by interference between the halftone dot screen used to print the magazine and your scanner's sensor grid. It is not in the original image — it is a scanning artifact. Our AI is specifically trained to detect and remove moire while preserving the underlying photo detail. For best results, try scanning the magazine page at a slight angle (15-30 degrees) to reduce moire at the scanning stage as well.
Can AI remove dust spots and scratches from my scanned photo?
Yes. The AI identifies dust spots (small circular blemishes), scratches (thin lines), and other physical damage artifacts and reconstructs the image content underneath. Minor dust and scratches are removed almost perfectly. Deep scratches or large damaged areas may be partially restored — the AI fills in plausible detail based on surrounding context, but very large missing areas may look slightly soft compared to the rest of the image.
My old family photos have a yellow/orange color cast — can the AI fix this?
Yes. Yellowing is caused by chemical changes in the photo paper and dyes over decades, and it follows predictable patterns that the AI is trained to reverse. The model removes the yellow/orange cast and restores natural color balance. It specifically handles the uneven yellowing that is often worse at edges and lighter areas while preserving intentionally warm tones (like a sunset or candlelit scene) in the original photo.
Is it better to scan with a flatbed scanner or take a photo with my phone?
A flatbed scanner at 600 DPI will produce significantly better results than a phone photo in most cases. Phone photos introduce perspective distortion, uneven lighting, reflections from the photo surface, and are limited by ambient light conditions. However, modern phone scanning apps (like Google PhotoScan) use multiple exposures to reduce glare and can produce acceptable results. For important photos or bulk scanning, invest the time in a proper flatbed scan.
What DPI should I scan at for the best restoration results?
Scan at 600 DPI for standard photo prints (4x6, 5x7) — this captures full detail and produces files large enough for reprinting at the same size or larger. For small photos (wallet size, passport photos), use 1200 DPI to capture enough pixel data for meaningful restoration. Scanning above your scanner's native optical resolution (check the specs — ignore "interpolated" numbers) does not add real detail and can actually introduce artifacts.
Can the AI restore a scanned photo that has water damage or missing sections?
For small water stains and spots, the AI can often restore the affected areas by reconstructing content from the surrounding context. For large areas of missing emulsion or severe water damage where the image is completely gone, the AI will attempt to fill in plausible content but results are unpredictable — faces and complex scenes in badly damaged areas may not be accurately reconstructed. The AI works best with damage that covers less than 10-15% of the total image area.
Ready to Transform Your Images?
Join thousands of professionals using our vectorization service
Scanner-Specific Artifacts and How They Differ from Digital Photo Problems
Scanned photos have a unique set of quality problems that digital photos never encounter. The most distinctive is moire patterns — a wavy, rainbow-like interference pattern that appears when a scanner's sensor grid interacts with the halftone dot pattern used in printed photographs. This is especially severe when scanning photos from newspapers, magazines, and some older photo prints that were made using halftone printing. The moire pattern is not in the original photo; it is created by the scanning process itself.
Physical damage is the other category of scanner-specific problems. Dust particles on the scanner glass or the photo surface appear as white or dark spots. Scratches on the photo show as thin lines. Fingerprints create smudged areas. Creases and fold marks show as sharp lines with color shifts. Yellowing from age adds a warm color cast to the entire image. Water damage can cause spots, staining, or areas of lost emulsion. None of these exist in digital photos — they are physical-world artifacts captured by the scanning process.
Scanner hardware also introduces its own limitations. Flatbed scanners have a fixed optical resolution (typically 300-4800 DPI for consumer models), and scanning above this native resolution just interpolates data rather than capturing real detail. CIS (Contact Image Sensor) scanners are thinner and cheaper but produce less sharp results than CCD scanners. Scanning with the lid open (for thick books or framed photos) can introduce light leaks and uneven illumination. Each of these scanner-specific issues requires different AI processing strategies than digital photo enhancement.
Pro Tips for Better Results
Scan at the highest optical resolution your scanner supports
Before scanning, check your scanner's native optical resolution (not interpolated). Scan at this maximum optical DPI — typically 600 or 1200 DPI for consumer flatbed scanners. Scanning at higher "interpolated" resolutions adds no real detail and just increases file size. Our AI can upscale a clean 600 DPI scan more effectively than it can fix a noisy 2400 DPI interpolated scan.
Clean the scanner glass and the photo before scanning
Use a microfiber cloth on the scanner glass and gently blow compressed air on the photo surface. Every dust particle and fingerprint on either surface becomes a permanent artifact in the scan. Spending 30 seconds cleaning before scanning saves significant restoration effort afterward.
Scan printed photos (newspapers, magazines) at an angle if possible
Moire patterns occur because the scanner's sampling grid aligns with the halftone dot grid of the print. Rotating the photo 15-30 degrees on the scanner bed can break this alignment and dramatically reduce moire. You can rotate the image back to straight in any editor after scanning.
Save scans as TIFF or PNG, not JPEG
Scanned photos already have quality issues — adding JPEG compression on top introduces additional artifacts that make restoration harder. Save your raw scans as TIFF (best) or PNG (good). If you already have JPEG scans, upload them as-is — the AI handles both scan artifacts and JPEG artifacts, but starting with a lossless scan format gives better results.
Why Moire Patterns Appear in Scanned Photos and How AI Removes Them
Moire patterns are an aliasing artifact caused by two overlapping periodic patterns interfering with each other. In scanned photos, the first pattern is the halftone dot screen used to print the original photo (typically 85-150 lines per inch for magazines and newspapers), and the second is the scanner's CCD or CIS sensor array. When the spatial frequencies of these two patterns interact, they create a low-frequency interference pattern visible as colored waves or diamond shapes. Traditional moire removal uses frequency-domain filtering (notch filters in the Fourier transform to suppress the halftone frequency), but this can also remove real image detail at those frequencies. Our AI approach is superior because it learns to distinguish moire patterns from real image content using contextual understanding — it knows that the wavy color bands in a sky region are moire (because skies are smooth) while preserving similarly-frequency detail in textured regions like fabric or foliage.