Free forever · no account · no credit card · no usage cap
What Old Photo Restoration does
Old Photo Restoration writes prompts for the whole recovery job: damage repair first, then tonal correction, then detail recovery. Working in that order matters, because sharpening a crease makes it worse, and the pack is structured so you do not skip a stage.
Remove scratches, dust, creases and edge damage from scanned prints
Recover contrast and tonal range from faded or yellowed photographs
Rebuild missing corners, torn edges and water-damaged areas
Restore faces and fine detail once the base repair is done
How to use Old Photo Restoration on PromptVault
Open PromptVault and go to the Scene Restoration section — no sign-up, no credit card, nothing to install.
Choose Old Photo Restoration and describe what you want. Add a reference photo on the page where the effect needs one.
Press Generate. PromptVault assembles the prompt pack on the page — Old Photo Restoration prompts plus the models that handle them best.
Copy the prompts into your own model (Midjourney, DALL·E, Stable Diffusion and Flux) and generate. Adjust one element at a time to steer the result.
What the prompt pack includes
PromptVault builds a ready-to-use prompt pack for Old Photo Restoration on the page. You run the prompts in your own model — Midjourney, DALL·E, Stable Diffusion and Flux — so you keep full control of the output and pay nothing to PromptVault.
26+ prompts written specifically for Old Photo Restoration, grouped by use case
A note of which model each prompt is written for: Midjourney, DALL·E, Stable Diffusion and Flux
Negative-prompt and parameter hints to reduce wasted generations
Variants for different subjects, lighting and styles, ready to paste
Practical use cases
Old Photo Restoration helps when the photo matters more than the method. Common real-world jobs:
Family archive rescue. Scanning a whole album and repairing scratches, dust and fading one image at a time with the same prompt pattern keeps the results consistent.
Portrait reconstruction. When the only copy of a childhood photo has creases across the face, run the damage-repair stage first, then let the face-restore stage rebuild fine detail from the surrounding pixels.
Wedding and event restorations. Faded color prints get their tonal range back before any sharpening, so skin tones stay natural.
Historical document shots. Torn edges, water stains and yellowed paper respond to the rebuild prompts even when the subject is a page rather than a face.
Frequently asked questions
What order should restoration steps run in?
Structure first, then tone, then detail. Remove the physical damage before touching contrast, and sharpen only at the end. Reversing that order locks artefacts into the image, which is why the pack is sequenced for you.
Can it fix a photo that is torn in half?
Partly. A missing region has to be reconstructed from the surrounding image, so the result is an informed guess rather than a recovery. The pack includes a rebuild prompt that keeps clothing, wallpaper and background patterns consistent.
Is Old Photo Restoration free on PromptVault? Are there any limits?
Yes — free forever. Every PromptVault tool is free, with no subscription, no credit card, no trial, no account and no daily generation cap. You can use Old Photo Restoration as often as you like.
At what resolution should I scan my old photos?
Scan at 300–600 DPI for prints: high enough that the detail-restore stage has pixels to work with, low enough that dust and film grain do not dominate. The pack includes prompts tuned for clean scans and for lower-quality phone re-shots.
Can restoration fix black-and-white and colorized photos too?
Yes. The tonal-correction stage handles faded monochrome prints, and the colorize-and-balance prompts can rebuild plausible color for black-and-white originals. Keep the damage-repair stage first regardless of whether the photo is in color.
Will the restored face look exactly like the original person?
It will be close, not identical. Face restoration fills in fine detail from what the model can read in the image, so an ancestor portrait with heavy damage gets a plausible, consistent face rather than a guaranteed likeness. For treasured portraits, keep the original scan safe and treat the result as a reconstruction.