How to Restore Old Photos: Remove Date Stamps First, Then Upscale

The cleanest old-photo restoration has a fixed order: remove printed date stamps and overlays at the original resolution, then enlarge what remains. Reversing the order sharpens the defect along with the photo and leaves more to erase. ClearPix runs both steps locally in your browser — scanned family archives never leave your device.

What restoration can and cannot fix

Super-resolution increases pixel dimensions and can make edges look sharper at normal viewing sizes. It cannot recover what the scan never captured: a face blurred at capture stays ambiguous, and text that was illegible in the print is guessed, not restored. Plan the workflow around removing defects first and enlarging second.

Steps

1. Scan or photograph the print at the highest practical resolution, keeping it flat and evenly lit. A 1200 px-wide scan is a workable minimum for 2× enlargement.
2. Open the date stamp remover and load the scan. The preset marks the typical bottom-right corner; add any missed digits with Rect or Paint, then process. Keep the original stamped scan as your archival copy.
3. Open the old photo upscaler with the cleaned image. Use 2× for degraded or grainy scans and 4× for small but clean originals.
4. Compare the result against the cleaned scan at 100% zoom. Faces and fine patterns are where super-resolution most often looks overly smooth or invented; if so, re-run at 2× instead of 4×.
5. Adjust color, contrast and scratches in any editor afterwards if you want a neutral tone — upscaling sharpens structure but does not recolor or repair physical damage.

Why this order matters

Removing the stamp at the original size gives the inpainting model real neighboring pixels to reconstruct from. If you enlarge first, the orange digits get enlarged and sharpened too, which leaves a larger, harder area to erase and wastes the upscale on defect pixels. The general image upscaler accepts the cleaned file directly, so the whole chain stays in one browser session.

Both tools download their models once and process every pixel on your device. Nothing is uploaded, and supported runs continue offline after the required files are cached.