Questions and honest answers

It makes old family photos clearer on your iPhone or iPad. Enhance uses on-device AI to enlarge a photo up to 4x with sharper detail. Restore Color reduces yellow tint and restores faded contrast. You compare before and after, then save a new copy to Photos.

Yes. The App Store lists the app as “Restore Old Photos: AI Enhance.” Local Photo Restore is the same app by developer David Balderston.

No. It doesn’t remove or fill physical damage. Enhancement may make a scratch slightly crisper along with everything else. For damaged prints, use a retouching tool with healing or inpainting, or a professional restorer. See options for scratched and torn photos.

No. It can improve clarity and contrast in black-and-white photos, but they stay black and white. Restore Color works on color that is already in the picture.

Not with a dedicated face model. Enhance improves the whole photo, including faces, but it doesn’t generate new facial features the way face-restoration tools do. Those tools can make a blurry face look sharp but may also change what the person looked like.

Treat it as an improved viewing copy, not an archival record. AI super-resolution predicts plausible detail and can sharpen texture that the original never recorded. Color correction is a judgment call. Keep the original scan and label enhanced copies. More in what AI restoration can’t do.

Enhance enlarges up to 4x. To fit device memory, the output is capped near 17 megapixels, for example 4728 × 3544 pixels. Photos that are already large gain less; crop in Photos first if you want to focus on part of a picture.

No. A reflection replaces part of the picture with white, and no adjustment can bring back what it hid. Retake the photo with softer, angled light. The print capture guide shows how.

No. Enhancement and color adjustments run on your device. There is no photo-processing server, and the photos you select and the results you save are not sent to the developer or any third party.

No. There’s no sign-up.

The app uses RevenueCat for purchase reporting and onboarding analytics, which receive a random app identifier, purchase information, onboarding progress, and basic app and device details. Photos and editing activity are never sent. There is no advertising SDK. See the privacy policy.

$3.99 once in the U.S. App Store. There’s no subscription, no credits, and no in-app purchase. Prices in other countries are set by Apple and shown before you buy.

Update to the current version, which includes every tool for all users. To review or cancel an earlier subscription, open iPhone Settings, tap your name, then Subscriptions. Apple handles refunds for earlier purchases.

iPhone and iPad with iOS or iPadOS 18.2 or later.

No. It’s available only for iPhone and iPad on the App Store.

No. Saving always adds a new image to Photos and leaves the original untouched.