How to Restore Colors in An Old Photograph? (5 Proven Ways)

Unfortunately, sometimes vintage photographs are of poor quality or are ruined for unknown reasons. It might be due to water or light damage, air exposure, incorrect storage, or other factors. Now that time has passed, and technology has advanced, you can not only shoot beautiful photographs, but some applications are also there to provide you with old picture restoration services. This article will look at the most exemplary programs for restoring photos with colorful backgrounds.

Part 1: How to Restore Colors in an Old Photograph Online for Free?

The most ideal choice for restoring old photograph is to use an free online service, here we introduce Repairit - Online AI Old Photo Restoration. Repairit Online service can help you colorize Photos with AI technolory, enhance colors, and sharpens blurry parts of your old photos.

Repairit Online Photo Restoration fixes the old photos online with just 3 clicks, and supports various photo formats like JPG, JPEG, PNG, WEBP, etc. It supports customers repairing 300 photos per month and supports each photo of 300M online. It owns the utmost security technology, the files are transferred via a 2048-bit encrypted connection and deleted after 3 hours.

Attention: As the online service has a limit to the photo size, number, and format, so if you have more photo restoration needs, the desktop version of Repairit will be your ideal choice, the desktop version has no limit to the photo format, size, and number.

Part 2: 1-Click to Restore Old Photos via Repairit for Desktop

The desktop version of Wondershare Repairit is an excellent software to restore old photos, requiring only a few steps and no need to learn any professional skills. It can fix practically every type of damaged picture. It can quickly repair blurry, color-loss, blank, illegible, greyed-out, grainy, and unavailable photos. So, you may use Repairit to restore your old high-quality images, and it also allows you to batch repair several pictures with a single click.

Wondershare Repairit - Photo Repair

Try It Free Try It Free

1,010,994 people have downloaded it.

• Repair damaged photos with all levels of corruption, such as grainy photos, dark photos, pixelated photos, faded photos, etc.

• Repair images of 15+ diverse formats, such as JPG, JPEG, PNG, CR3, CR2, NEF, NRW, etc.

• Repair critically damaged or corrupted photos available on SD cards, phones, cameras, USB flash drives, and more.

• No limit to the number and size of the repairable photos.

• Support Windows 11/10/8/7/Vista, Windows Server 2003/2008/2012/2016/2019/2022, and macOS 10.10~macOS 14.

See the simple steps for how to restore colors in an old picture.

Step 1: Download and install Repairit on your PC/Mac.

After launching Repairit, select "AI Photo Enhancer" from the "More Types Repair" section, then click on “+Add” to upload the old photos to repair.

Step 2: Choose "Old Photo Restoration & Colorizer" model to begin the photo restoration process.

After the old photos are uploaded, please choose the desired AI model "Old Photo Restoration" from the left side, you can also colorize the old photos by the "Photo Colorizer" model at the same time. Then click the "Start Enhancing" button to start the restoration process.

Note：You can also choose a desired resolution from the "Output Resolution" to make the old photos clearer.

Step 3: Preview and save the repaired photos.

After restoring the faded photos, you can preview the repaired photo to ensure it is restored successfully. If you are satisfied with the restored photo, click on the “Save” button and save it on your device.

Here is a video tutorial guide to show you how to restore & colorize old photos on a computer.

Part 3: Restore Colors in an Old Photograph with Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a well-known name in digital media that may also be used for old picture restoration. People in the graphic design industry are well recognized and experts in their fields and this one program may help you do all of your creating jobs with ease. The only requirement is that you be an expert in its use. Adobe Photoshop separates your image into layers, allowing you to alter the image by selecting the layer you wish to change. That implies that instead of merely applying a filter to your image and calling it good, Abode Photoshop will improve the quality of your image by working thoroughly on multiple levels.

Here are the steps for restoring old pictures using Adobe Photoshop:

Step 1: Install and launch Photoshop.

Step 2: Open Image in Photoshop and click "Duplicate Layer".

You can use the drag and drop method or click on add files option to open the file in Photoshop. However, click "Duplicate Layer" to create another layer for a duplicate file, saving your original picture for future use if any issue occurs.

Step 3: Adjust your Image.

Before starting the main process, you first need to have an observation of the image and if you think it needs to be cropped or its position is not appropriate, you can also rotate the image as per your observation. It will help you a lot in getting the best quality result. You will get the crop option from Toolbox.

Step 4: Make adjustments to make it colorful.

Adjustments should be made using Photoshop tools like improving the image's contrast, color, vibrancy, and tone. You will find a list of tools for making it perfect.

Step 5: Add Filters.

After adding and adjusting color and other necessary elements, you can also add suitable filters if you think they will make your image attractive and colorful. After adding filters, you can finally save it for future use.

Part 4: Restore Faded Photos with Gimp

GIMP is a solid yet free image editing program that can restore faded photos. It is widely regarded as one of the most excellent open-source tools for photo repair. It may be altered by users who know how to code because it is open-source architecture, which is why professionals can handle it as they desire. Those who do not know how to alter code can use GIMP's existing tools and capabilities. It is marketed as the most excellent free option for professional-level applications. Artists, designers, and photographers have utilized it for various purposes, including financial gain and picture restoration in multiple cases where that picture could be an essential element.

Step 1: Scan the photo.

After successful installation, firstly, you will scan the photo to get it in digital form on your PC. After that, you can scan it using various online cam scanners and then open it on GIMP.

Step 2: Cropping.

You can also crop the video if you need only a specific part to be cleared from the scanned picture.

Step 3: Start Repairing.

You can start repairing now by using various tools that GIMP provides. Use its bright brushes for black and white photo restoration. Add filters, themes, and colors and adjust the dampness, cracks, and spots to make it colorful. Also, change the white balance to make your old and new damaged pictures look new.

Part 5: How to Colorize Black And White Photo?

Repairit - Online AI Photo Colorizer serves as a online tool to colorize black and white photo. This incredible online tool uses artificial intelligence to automatically colorize your black and white photos, resulting in beautiful, vibrant images.

What if your black-and-white photos get blurry and full of scratches? Don't worry, the AI colorization will repair these scratches, clear the blurry parts, and supplement the missing parts. Then it will intelligently colorize the repaired black-and-white photos, making them come alive with brilliant colors.

Step 1: Upload the Black-and-white Photo

First of all, you need to enter the website, choose "AI Enhancement" and click "Add Photo" to upload your black-and-white photos.

Step 2: Open the Photo Colorize mode and start colorization.

Here are two AI models, please choose "Photo Colorize" in "AI Old Photo Model" and click the "Start" button. Here you can also choose a desired resolution in "AI Upscale" to sharpen the colorized photos.

Now it will start the photo colorization process, just wait for a moment.

Step 3: Preview the results and download.

Now the colorization process is completed. You can preview the colored photo and click "Download" to save the photo.