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No. 05 — AI Tools · Cloud HDPro · on our GPU

Old family photos, back in focus.

A shoebox of prints, four generations, and nobody left who can name the back row. Scan one print at a time and our server rebuilds every face it can find — each one checked against your original, so what comes back is your family, not somebody the model imagined.

Pro · Cloud HDDeleted on completionUp to 25 MB · 24 MP
Restore a family photoCloud HD · our GPU

Pro to restore your photo →

How it works

  1. Pick one scanned print at a time — JPEG, PNG or WebP, up to 25 MB and 24 megapixels.
  2. Our GPU restores every face it finds and checks each one against your original. If a rebuilt face drifts too far from the person in your photo, the run is refused rather than handing back an invented face — and you are not charged.
  3. Download the restored PNG at the same resolution you uploaded, and keep it beside the untouched scan.

This page is the photo restorer, tuned to working through a family archive rather than a single picture.

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Restore Old Family Photos — Pro, on our server

Sort the box before you scan a single print. A family archive is never one kind of problem. Make three piles: prints that are simply soft, faded or slightly out of focus; prints with physical damage — tears, water marks, silverfish holes, a corner torn off; and photographs that are already digital and merely small. Only the first pile is a face-restoration job, and it is usually the largest. The second belongs with the scratch remover or the stain remover, where you brush over the damage and the surrounding scene is filled back in. Sorting first stops you spending runs on prints the face model was never going to help.

Group portraits are where face-by-face restoration earns its place. The model finds each face in the frame separately, rebuilds it at high resolution, blends it back into the original photograph, and compares the result against the same face in your upload. A christening with eleven people in it gets eleven independent reconstructions. The front row nearly always comes back well; the back row depends entirely on how many pixels a face occupies, which is a function of how the photograph was taken in 1958 and how you scanned it in 2026. Only the second of those is still in your control. If a rebuilt face has drifted from the person in your original, the run is refused instead of returned, and nothing is charged — which makes trying a marginal print risk-free.

Name the files while there is still someone alive who knows the names. The restoration is the easy half of an archive project; the metadata is the half that is genuinely irreplaceable. Keep the raw scan as an untouched master, put the restored PNG beside it, and give both a filename that carries the year, the occasion and the people — not IMG_0143. Crop scanner-bed borders with the on-device crop tool before you upload, so the faces occupy more of the frame, and if you need small copies to send round the family, make them last with the compressor rather than by re-saving the master. Both of those run on your own machine.

These are the most personal files you will ever hand to a website, so here is exactly what happens to one. Restoration is part of Cloud HD, the Pro-only, opt-in feature set that runs on our GPU because the model is far too heavy for a browser. Your photograph is encrypted in transit, uploaded to our server for that run and deleted when the run finishes, and in all cases within 24 hours. Processing happens in the United States — Cloudflare R2 for storage, a Modal GPU for the model — and nothing you upload is ever used to train anything. Everything else on MiniPx, including the crop and compression steps above, runs entirely on your own device. If you also want colour on a black-and-white family portrait, the family colorizer covers that, and the main restorer explains the identity check in full.

How it works

  1. Sort the shoebox first: Separate prints that are merely soft or faded from prints with tears and stains — the two need different tools, and only the first is a face-restoration job.
  2. Digitise one print per file: Scan at 600 DPI or photograph square-on in daylight, then crop to the print edge so the faces fill as much of the frame as possible.
  3. Run the restoration: Upload the file here, up to 25 MB and 24 megapixels. Every face is rebuilt and identity-checked against your original before anything comes back.
  4. File the result beside the master: Keep the untouched scan, save the restored PNG next to it under a name that says what was done, and write down who is in the picture.

Frequently asked questions

Does it work on a group portrait with several people in it?
Yes. The model looks for every face in the frame and rebuilds each one, then checks each restored face against the same face in your original. A wedding group or a school class works the same way as a single portrait. The back row is usually the weakest result, because a face forty pixels wide gives the model very little to anchor on.
How many photos from the album can I put through in a month?
Cloud HD runs are part of MiniPx Pro: 150 runs a month on Pro Monthly, 200 on Pro Annual, shared across every server-side tool, with a ceiling of 30 runs an hour. The allowance resets on the 1st of the month in UTC and does not roll over. A run that fails or is refused is not charged, so a stubborn print costs nothing to try.
My prints have tears, water stains and a corner missing. Will this fix them?
No. RestoreFormer++ rebuilds faces and general softness; it does not repair physical damage and it will not invent image where the paper is gone. Damage away from the faces comes back exactly as it was. For a tear or a stain across the print, paint over it with the brush on the object remover instead — a different tool with a different model.
Should I scan a whole album page at once or one print at a time?
One print at a time gives the better result, because the faces end up larger in the file. If you have already scanned a page of six, crop each print out with the on-device crop tool before uploading. A 25 MB and 24 megapixel ceiling applies per upload, and a full album page scanned at high resolution can exceed it on its own.
What happens to a family photo once the run finishes?
It is uploaded to our server for that run and deleted when the run finishes, and in all cases within 24 hours. The connection is encrypted, the processing happens in the United States on Cloudflare R2 storage and a Modal GPU, and nothing you upload is ever used to train anything. Every other MiniPx tool runs entirely on your own device.