Restore & Enhance Old Photo

A damaged / faded photo → a clean, sharp, restored image.

Category: edit · Difficulty: Intermediate · ~Time: 4 min

What you'll make

Bring an old or low-quality photo back to life: remove scratches, creases, and dust, fix fading, recover detail in faces, and (optionally) upscale to a crisp, print-ready resolution. Perfect for family archives, heritage scans, and rescuing the only copy of a precious shot.

Models used

🎨 Image — Nano Banana 2 (edit) (resolve live; e.g. google/nano-banana-2/edit)
🎨 Image (alt) — Seedream 4.5 (edit) (resolve live; e.g. bytedance/seedream-v4.5/edit)
💬 LLM — Claude (to itemize the defects to fix), optional

Steps

Upload the scan — "Upload this scanned old photo and give me the URL." → maps to atlas_upload_media; keep the download_url.
Restore — "Repair scratches, tears, and fading, recover facial detail, and clean up noise. Keep the original composition and likeness." → maps to atlas_generate_image with Nano Banana 2 (edit), passing the uploaded URL as the input image.

Tip: ask the agent to atlas_search_docs for the model first to confirm the live edit schema and the largest supported output size for an upscale pass.
Upscale / sharpen — re-run on the restored result requesting a larger, sharper render (a dedicated upscale model may exist — have the agent atlas_list_models / atlas_search_docs for "upscale" and pick the live one).
(Optional) Colorize — for black-and-white, add "colorize naturally with period-accurate, realistic tones."

Prompt starters

Restore this old photograph: remove scratches, creases, dust, and stains;
fix fading and contrast; sharpen and recover detail in the faces. Preserve
the exact composition, expressions, and likeness. Natural, non-plastic skin.

Colorize this black-and-white portrait with realistic, period-accurate tones.
Keep every facial feature and the original framing unchanged.

Tips & variations

Keep restoration and upscaling as two passes — restore first, then enlarge — for sharper, more controllable results.
Nano Banana 2 (edit) is strong on faces; try Seedream 4.5 (edit) if you need heavier reconstruction of missing corners or torn regions.
Tell the model to "preserve likeness, do not beautify" so restored faces still look like the real person.