Face restore

Drop a photo and Toolula finds every face, redraws it sharply with the GFPGAN AI model and blends it back into the picture — on your device, with a before/after comparison.

About this tool

Sharp Faces in Blurry, Small and Old Photos

For scanned family photos, old phone pictures and small faces in group shots — restored in your browser, never uploaded.

Every Face, Aligned and Restored

Each face is found, turned upright to the eyes, nose and mouth, and restored at 512 × 512 pixels by GFPGAN v1.4 (Apache-2.0). Up to 10 faces per photo, largest first.

Blends In Naturally

The restored face takes over the colours and light of the original — sepia stays sepia, black-and-white stays black-and-white — and is pasted back with a soft edge. The strength slider mixes in as much of the original face as you like.

Upscale the Whole Photo Too

Turn on 2× upscaling to enlarge the background with Real-ESRGAN at the same time, so small faces keep their new detail in the saved file.

How to use it

  1. Drop a photo with one or more faces (JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC), or paste it with Ctrl + V.
  2. Optionally turn on Also upscale the photo 2×.
  3. Click Restore faces. The first run downloads the model (82 MB) once.
  4. Drag the before/after comparison and set the strength.
  5. Choose PNG, JPG or WebP and download.

Frequently asked questions

Are my images uploaded to a server?

No. Every image is decoded, processed and encoded inside your browser tab with Canvas, Web Workers and WebAssembly. Nothing is uploaded, stored or logged.

Which AI model restores the faces?

GFPGAN v1.4 by Tencent ARC Lab, released under the Apache 2.0 licence. Toolula converted the official weights for onnxruntime-web; they are downloaded once from toolula.com (82 MB), cached, and run on your graphics card (WebGPU) or processor.

How long does it take?

A few seconds per face on a graphics card with WebGPU. Without it the processor does the work, about 30 seconds per face on a desktop and longer on phones. Phones and devices with little memory restore up to 4 faces per photo.

Is the restored face accurate?

It looks like the person, but the AI redraws eyes, skin and hair from what faces usually look like, so fine details are invented. Lower the strength for a more faithful result, and don't use restored photos for passports or ID cards.

Why was a face not found?

The detector needs faces that look roughly towards the camera and are at least about 20 pixels wide. Faces in profile, covered faces and very tiny faces are skipped.

Is it free, and is there a watermark?

Yes, it is free to use without an account, and Toolula never adds a watermark. The free plan has fair-use limits; Toolula Pro, an optional plan, raises them.