I have a really old photo of my dad. I want to restore it, but the AI I have tried keeps changing his face. What do I do?
Posted 30 April 2026
Direct answer
You are using the wrong category of tool. The chat-based AI image generators (ChatGPT, Gemini, Midjourney) are generative: they make a new image that resembles your input rather than repairing the original. For old photographs, use a dedicated restoration tool: Remini for casual use, Photoshop's Photo Restoration neural filter for control, Topaz Photo AI for a shoebox of family photos. Always compare the result against the original at full size.
The first time I asked a chatbot to restore an old family photograph, it gave me back a clean, sharp image of someone who looked very nearly like the person in the original. Not quite. The chin was wrong and the eyes were a different shape. I spent some time working out why, because I had not yet understood what the tool was doing. So this answer is partly for the person asking and partly for the person I was a year ago.
The faces keep changing because of what the tool actually is, not because you are using it wrong. The chat-based AI image tools (ChatGPT, Gemini, Midjourney) are generative. When you ask them to "restore" a photo, they are not repairing pixels in the original. They are making a new image that resembles your input. With a face you do not know, that often looks fine. With your dad's face, you spot the difference immediately.
The right tools for the job
You want a different category of tool. The label to search for is "photo restoration" or "photo enhancement", not "AI image generation". These tools are built to denoise, deblur, fix scratches, and sharpen what is already there, rather than invent what is not.
Three I would actually try, in order of how much effort and money they ask of you.
Remini. A consumer app on iPhone and Android with a free tier. You take a photo of the original print with your phone, or upload a scan, and it does a one-tap enhance. It is the simplest option and for many family photos it is good enough. The free tier is rate-limited and adds a watermark on some exports. The paid plan is around A$10 a month and you can cancel after one month if you only need to do a batch.
Photoshop with the Photo Restoration neural filter. Adobe's restoration tool sits inside Photoshop and is built to repair damage rather than reimagine the picture. If you already pay for Photoshop, or you are comfortable with a one-month subscription (around A$35), this gives you the most control. You can mask the face so the tool does not touch it, fix the background and frame, then sharpen the face by hand.
Topaz Photo AI. A specialist desktop app for Mac and Windows that does face recovery, denoise, and upscaling as separate, controllable steps rather than as one black-box pass. The catch is the price. It is roughly A$300 as a one-off purchase, which is a lot to spend on a single tool. The maths only works if you have a shoebox of family photos to work through, not just one. For one or two photos, do not bother and pay A$10 for a month of Remini instead. For a hundred photos, Topaz pays for itself, and there is no monthly bill afterwards.
Whichever tool you pick, scan the original at the highest resolution your phone or scanner allows before you start. Restoration tools can only work with what you give them. A blurry photo of a faded photo will produce a blurry, faded result no matter which AI you point at it.
Restoration is repair, not invention
Good enough for: Removing scratches, fading, dust, mild creasing, gentle blur, and water damage. Sharpening eyes that were always slightly soft. Recovering colour from faded prints. Anything where the information is still in the photo and the tool just needs to bring it out.
Not enough for: Replacing a face the camera missed. Reconstructing a hand or arm that is out of frame. Inventing detail that was never there. If the original is too damaged for repair, the right answer is sometimes to keep the damaged version. The scratches are real history. A smooth invented face is not.
What I would not do
Do not keep using ChatGPT or Gemini for this and expect a different answer. They will keep regenerating the face because that is what they are designed to do. Save them for the jobs they are good at and use a restoration tool for this one.
Before you accept any restored version, put the original and the new one side by side at full size. If the eyes, the mouth, or the shape of the chin have shifted, that is no longer your dad. Either redo it with the face masked off, or accept that some scratches and softness are part of what the photo is.
This last bit is the one I would say carefully, because it took me a while to get to. The restored photo with the wrong chin is worse than the unrestored one with the scratches. The scratches are real. The wrong chin is not. When the photograph is of someone you have lost, you want what was actually there, even when what was actually there is faded and creased. AI is good at giving you a smoother version. It is not good at giving you the truer one. Choose the truer one.
As of May 2026. Tool features and pricing change quickly; if you are reading this much later, check the current state before relying on the specifics.
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