Fixing a scratched photo
Why old prints get scratched, what never to do to the original, and how AI removes scratches and dust from a scan of the print in about a minute.
Scratches are the most common wound on old prints — decades of shuffling through shoeboxes, sliding in and out of albums, and dust ground in by other photos stacked on top. The good news: of all damage types, scratches are the most reliably repairable, because the image around each scratch usually survives intact.
Why prints scratch, and why you should stop touching them
A photographic print is paper coated with a thin gelatin emulsion that carries the image. That emulsion is softer than the paper under it, so anything abrasive — grit, a fingernail, the corner of another photo — plows a groove through the image itself. Fine white lines are shallow emulsion scratches; dark or colored lines usually mean the scratch cut deeper.
Do not try to polish, wipe or wet the print to make scratches less visible. Rubbing grinds dust further into the emulsion and adds new scratches on top of the old ones. If the print is dusty, the safest physical cleaning is a gentle pass with a soft air blower — nothing that touches the surface. Every repair beyond that should happen digitally, on a scan, where mistakes cost nothing.
When you scan, resist the scanner’s built-in dust and scratch removal. It works by blurring, and on faces it smears exactly the detail a restoration needs. Scan clean and flat, then let the repair happen in one deliberate step.
Reading a scratch: shallow, deep, or a fine grid
Most scratches you will actually see are shallow: a fine white line where something abrasive skated across the emulsion without cutting all the way through it. Because the paper base underneath is untouched, all the color and tonal information right next to the line survives intact, which is exactly what a repair needs to work from. These are the cleanest cases — a thin channel rebuilt from its own edges, with nothing genuinely lost.
A darker or oddly tinted line means the scratch went further — through the emulsion and into the paper base itself, or through more than one coated layer on a resin-coated print. The paper base is a different material with its own color and texture, so it reads as a dark mark rather than a bright white one. It is still a narrow, localized loss, and it restores the same way a shallow scratch does — reconstructed from the surrounding image — just a slightly wider channel to fill.
A third pattern turns up on prints that spent years loose in a shoebox or sliding in and out of magnetic album pages: not one scratch but dozens of fine, roughly parallel hairlines, laid down by prints rubbing against each other or against a page every time the album was opened. Spread across a whole print, this can look at a glance like paper texture rather than damage, but each hairline behaves the same as a single scratch — the mesh just means many small repairs happening across the frame instead of one obvious one.
Scanning and restoring a scratched photo
Scan at 600 dpi or higher
600 dpi is a reasonable floor for a print up to postcard size — enough resolution for restoration to work with fine scratch lines and for the result to hold up if you print it again later; for larger prints the 300 dpi minimum from the digitizing guide still holds. Smaller prints, like wallet-size portraits, are worth scanning higher still, since 600 dpi on a small original still yields a small file.
Turn off the scanner’s dust and scratch removal
This setting lives in most scanner software under a name like automatic repair or dust and scratch removal, and it works by softly blurring anything that looks like a defect — including fine facial detail near a scratch. Leave it off and scan the print exactly as it looks; the repair belongs in one deliberate step afterward, not blended invisibly into the raw scan.
Clear loose dust with air, not fabric
A rocket-style air blower lifts loose grit off the surface without adding new scratches. A cloth, tissue or soft brush dragged across the print can grind whatever dust is sitting there straight into the emulsion — the opposite of what you are trying to do.
Upload the full, un-cropped scan
Restoration works from the context around the damage, so a wider scan gives it more surrounding image to reconstruct from, especially for a scratch that runs close to an edge or through a face.
Check the face against the original before you decide
Once the result comes back, compare it side by side with the scan, especially anywhere a scratch crossed a face. That comparison is the point of showing the result before payment rather than after.
Scratched photo questions
Can scratches across a face be fixed?
Yes — this is the case AI handles best, because the undamaged parts of the face tell it what the scratched parts looked like. Epoha also tells the model, face by face, what may not change — and shows you the result next to the original before you pay, so a quietly redrawn face is easy to catch.
What about hundreds of tiny scratches all over the print?
Dense fine scratching, common on prints stored loose, is treated the same way as a few big scratches — it just takes nothing extra from you. Upload one clean scan and judge the result before paying.
Should I scan the print again after restoration?
No — restoration works on the digital file, and the original print stays exactly as it was. Keep the print stored flat in a sleeve so it collects no new scratches.
Is 600 dpi actually necessary, or is a phone photo enough?
A flatbed scan at 600 dpi captures more consistent detail than most phone photos, especially in the fine texture right around a scratch, so it is the better default when you have a scanner. A phone still works if that is what you have — even light and a steady hand matter more than the exact resolution, and the phone-scanning guide covers how to get a clean result that way.
Once the scratches are gone, should I get a new print made?
That is a personal call, not a technical requirement — the repaired file works fine as a digital copy for sharing or framing on a screen. If you do want a physical print, the guide on printing a restored photo covers paper choice and sizing so the new print does the repair justice.
Remove the scratches, keep the face
Upload a scan of the scratched print and see it repaired in about a minute.
Free during early access · 2 restorations a day
Sources
- Information Leaflet on the Care, Handling, and Storage of Photographs — Library of Congress
- Preservation Guidelines for Digitizing Library Materials — Library of Congress