The desire to restore old photos and repair other visual details in them is always present. We have previously talked about several online services that automate the entire process, but we have noticed that some disappeared, or abandoned their free status when they implemented a token system. PhotoRestore.io is relatively new on the web, offers five different restoration functions, and for now, it has no cost…
Once again, the key behind all automatic photo restoration systems is to reach a level that is “good enough”. None of them can replace a professional who decides to work pixel by pixel on an image, but if the idea is to do quick and casual processing, the truth is that there are several free services and algorithms at our disposal, with more than appropriate performance.
That brings us to PhotoRestore.io, a new service apparently developed by Mubox on Twitter. I say “apparently” because its profile seems to be managed by a bot, but the only thing that interests us here is finding out how well its restoration of old and low-resolution photos works.
Restoring photos with PhotoRestore.io
Its options are divided into five categories: restore photos, enhance quality, remove backgrounds, improve resolution, and colorize. Photo restoration uses a combination of smoothing, sharpening, and resolution upscaling, but it does not remove the most serious damage like tears and folds. The quality option works similarly, and also applies a variant of GFPGAN or CodeFormer on faces. In some cases it will work well, and in others… it will ruin the photo completely.
Background removal is the weakest tool in PhotoRestore.io. I decided to load different types of images, but its results were very bad in all cases. The resolution change is limited to 1,600 pixels per side (whether horizontal or vertical), and when it comes to colorizing, the algorithm does an interesting job, but the final photo is too small.
In summary, PhotoRestore.io will be a good ally for the casual user who needs to restore photos quickly, but we cannot deny that it has several aspects to improve. The counter on its site suggests that about 175 thousand images have been processed so far, therefore, there are many people out there who want to use it.
Official site: Click here
