Photo & face restoration

What you can do

Three complementary operations to improve the overall quality of a photo:

• Face restoration (CodeFormer) — repairs damaged skin, blurry eyes, scars, heavy wrinkles
• Denoise — removes the "grain" from dark, compressed, or high-ISO photos
• Upscale 4x (Real-ESRGAN) — enlarges 4 times while preserving sharpness (512×512 → 2048×2048)

When to use each operation

Face restoration (CodeFormer)

Perfect for:

• Damaged person photos (old, photocopied, scratched ID photos)
• Skin with visible imperfections (scars, acne)
• Blurry or partially closed eyes
• Smartphone photos in low light (noise + unclear face)

Not a beauty filter: it repairs real damage, doesn't change facial features.

Denoise

Perfect for:

• Night photos (high ISO = lots of noise)
• Video screenshots (pixelated and artifacts)
• Compressed photos (low-quality JPEG)
• Scans of old photos (streaks, digitized dust)

Upscale 4x (Real-ESRGAN)

Perfect for:

• Enlarging small photos (from web, from old smartphone)
• Preparing a photo for large print (poster, billboard)
• Recovering details from digital zoom (the model intelligently reconstructs missing pixels)

How to use

Step 1: upload the photo

Click and select a JPG or PNG up to 10 MB. Supports color or black and white photos.

Step 2: choose the operation in the Mode section

You see three buttons:

• 🔧 Restore — for faces and imperfections
• 📉 Denoise — to reduce noise
• 🔝 Upscale 4x — to enlarge

Step 3: press Process

Processing takes:

• Restore — 7–10 seconds (depends on photo size)
• Denoise — 3–5 seconds
• Upscale 4x — 10–15 seconds (because it doubles each side: 512 → 1024 → 2048)

Step 4: download the result

Once done, you see the preview on the right. Press Download to save the retouched version to your computer.

Recommended combinations

Tip: Process Denoise first, then Restore, then Upscale 4x (this order improves the final result).

Limitations

• Doesn't change context: if the photo is blurry because the subject moved, restoration can't recover lost details (it's physically missing information).
• Side-profile faces or closed eyes: CodeFormer works better on normal frontal faces.
• Upscale 4x doubles the file: a 512×512 becomes 2048×2048 (file weight ~4×). Result is always 8-bit RGB.

Pro tip

If you upload a photo already large (2000×2000+), don't use upscale (result will be blurry). Use Restore + Denoise only.

If you upload a photo very small (200×200), upscale may give uncertain results. Photos 512×512 or larger work best.