My workflow for restoring old family photos used to be a multi-hour ordeal involving frequency separation and meticulous dodging and burning in Photoshop—a process so tedious I’d often procrastinate on it for months. I recently tested a different approach using the AI Sharpen Photo tool, expecting the usual AI over-sharpening that creates weird artifacts on skin. Instead, I found a surprisingly surgical precision. I fed it a severely degraded scan of my grandparents from the 1970s, where the original print had that classic soft, hazy look. The tool managed to pull detail out of the fabric textures and sharpen the facial features just enough to make them recognizable without introducing that awful plasticine texture. It handled the film grain with respect, reducing the blur without eliminating the character. This single step has effectively replaced about 70% of my initial prep work, allowing me to focus purely on color correction and creative grading. It’s honestly made archiving feel rewarding again rather than just a slog through technical debt.
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