How to Restore and Colourise Old Photos on a Samsung

One of the niftier uses for Galaxy’s AI-powered photo editing tools is remastering faded, blurry photos. You don’t even need a scanner to get photos onto your phone. Just photograph the photo. Then in Gallery swipe up on the photo, tap Remaster and watch as Galaxy tries to sharpen the picture and remove any fading.

Another AI-based photo tool in Galaxy phones is colourising black-and-white photos. You’ll find this feature, called Colorise, among Gallery’s suggestions, or you can use Photo Assist.

Keep in mind that AI remastering and colourising make guesses as to what details might have been in an image. So keep the original scans around as your record.

The restore workflow at a glance

Start with glare-free photos for best results and proceed through the steps in the order presented. Each tool will use the file created in the previous step.

Copy the print with the camera

A common problem when photographing artwork is glare, especially if you are trying to photograph a photograph. Reflections can really ruin your image and there’s nothing you can do in post to fix it.

Glare is caused by a light source reflecting off a shiny surface (like a photograph) and into the camera. You can avoid this problem by first making sure that any overhead lights are turned off and not using your camera’s flash. Set the print near a window and angle the print so that the light from the window falls across the print from one side. Fine Art Tutorials has a great tutorial on how to photograph artwork that recommends using two lights placed at a 45-degree angle to cast the glare away from your camera.

1. 1

   Turn on Scanning

   Open Camera settings and check that Scanning is enabled under Intelligent features (as checked on a Galaxy S25 Ultra with One UI 9 in November 2026).

2. 2

   Set up the print

   Lay the print flat on a contrasting background (such as a dark matt book cover). If possible, position yourself so that there’s indirect daylight lighting from the side.

3. 3

   Hold the phone level

   Point the camera lenses directly down at the print, keeping the edges of the print and phone as parallel/square as possible for even focus.

4. 4

   Tap Scan

   In Photo mode, wait for the Scan button to appear (according to Samsung this should only happen when the app recognises a document), then tap Scan to take the picture.

5. 5

   Adjust and save

   Tap Adjust to fine-tune the corner positions, select the most neutral filter and tap Save.

For example, SamMobile says the new document scanner in One UI 8.5 has four different filters (Clean, Black & White, Natural and Grayscale), along with an option for High scan resolution. Choose Natural if you just want to take a picture of a print. The other filters are designed to enhance text, and they’ll get rid of the subtle gradations of grey which make an image interesting. If you can’t get the Scan option with a print in front of your phone, take a regular picture in Photo mode and crop it later. If you want to crop in really tight (say, for a small print), 50MP will hold its own better; see our 12MP, 50MP and 200MP guide for the trade-off.

Whatever you do, don’t save it as a PDF, because Samsung’s page about Edit suggestions says that you can use them with GIF, JPG and PNG images, and MP4 videos. And take another picture of the print before you start messing about, so you’ve always got the original in Gallery.

Fix blur and fading with Remaster

Remaster is explained in Samsung’s Galaxy S26 user guide as a handy way to revive photos that appear dull, blurry or low in resolution. Samsung’s Singapore support page adds that Remaster can enhance image quality by improving lighting, resolution and colour.

However, Remaster has changed on the Galaxy S26 running One UI 8.5. According to SamMobile, Remaster on the Galaxy S26 leverages generative AI to enhance image details and can process images up to 12MP. SamMobile adds that Remaster results might not always be satisfactory.

1. 1

   Open the copy

   Find the print in Gallery and open it. Swipe up for more information and suggestions about the photo.

2. 2

   Tap Remaster

   Select Remaster and wait for your phone to process the image (don’t turn off your phone or the screen while it’s processing).

3. 3

   Compare before and after

   When Remaster is done, compare the before and after versions of the image. Zoom in on people’s faces and hands to make sure they look the way you remember them.

4. 4

   Save it

   If Remaster did a good job, save the image by tapping the Save icon. If Remaster did not do a good job, don’t save the image.

Why Remaster is missing

The Remaster feature isn’t missing from Samsung’s Gallery app. Samsung simply changed where to find it, and it’s only visible for photos Gallery thinks can benefit from it. Work through these potential issues in order.

The Remaster tool isn’t limited to phones, either, and it’s also available on Galaxy Book4 laptops via the three-dot menu in Samsung’s Gallery app, so you’ve got options if your phone doesn’t support the feature. Our Gallery photo editor guide covers the other tools in the same panel.

Add colour with Colorise or Photo Assist

Colorise turns a black-and-white photo into a colour one. On supported phones, it's available from the same panel as Remaster (swipe up from the bottom of the photo). Alternatively, you can ask Photo Assist to do it for you.

Create lets you make changes to photos based on your instructions. Type your request into the Describe what to change box and tap Generate.

These instructions are from Samsung's online Galaxy S26 user guide. Samsung's Edit suggestions page, which lists Colorise, was written for the Galaxy S24 series.

If you’re happy to colourise images, be specific when it comes to colours. If you know that grandma’s coat was dark green, for example, tell the app so, instead of leaving it to chance. Samsung’s footnotes say Photo Assist features may require a network connection and a Samsung Account, and images may be resized. A watermark indicating AI-generated content will be displayed on images saved after applying generative AI-based features. Samsung’s US support page adds that generative AI-based editing results are limited to images with a maximum of 12MP. Our Object Eraser and Photo Assist guide walks through the Create screen step by step.

Black and white is a valid finish too. A faded print often looks better with Remaster's clean-up and a little extra contrast than with invented colour. Our black and white guide covers that tonal edit.

Scratches, dust and tears

A scratch remover isn’t one of the tools Samsung offers in Gallery. You’ll have to repair those manually. For tiny blemishes in an otherwise uniform space (sky, wall, etc.), Object eraser will clone the surroundings to repair the damage. Note that Samsung disables this by default in One UI 8.5; you’ll have to enable it in Gallery’s settings under Photo editor settings. If the scratch is bigger, Samsung’s AI eraser within Photo Assist allows you to tap or draw around scratches, filling them in with AI-generated pixels. Do not attempt to remove blemishes near the mouth or eyes using Samsung’s AI-powered erasers.

Chances are high that they’ll mess up and give you a weird eye. Remove moire can help fix photos of printed photos in books/newspapers that often have stripes/dots. For a long crack across a face, Snapseed's Healing tool gives you finer control with small brushes, and our Snapseed guide shows how to use it.

What AI restoration invents

A grey dress in a 1950s print might have been brown or it might have been blue, and AI has to make a guess. And while those guesses can be convincing at a glance, it’s impossible to know whether they’re accurate. This is especially true of people’s faces.

In 2023, Remaster made headlines after a Galaxy S23 Ultra owner used the feature on a photo of their seven-month-old daughter and Remaster gave the baby teeth where there should have been a tongue (via SamMobile; coverage from The Verge).

Samsung’s Remaster has since been given a generative AI facelift for the Galaxy S26 and SamMobile cautions that Remaster AI results “may not always be ideal”.

Faces are the features most at risk of being significantly altered by AI because when details are lost to printing or the passage of time, AI has to reconstruct faces using its knowledge of similar ones. This can result in a face that resembles the person in the original image, but isn’t quite right, more like their cousin, rather than them. The more information missing from the print, the more likely AI is to introduce noticeable errors.

• It’s always good practice to keep an unaltered version of any photo you edit, so save the original before you begin.
• After you’ve restored a photo, zoom in to check for any telltale signs that the face doesn’t quite look right before printing or sharing it. Our photo printer guide covers printing from the phone.
• If you colourise a black-and-white photo, be sure to let anyone you show it to know that it’s been artificially coloured.
• Samsung’s One UI 7 and beyond add Content Credentials to photos that show which AI tools were used to alter them, SamMobile reported in August 2025. Don’t remove these if you want viewers to know a photo has been AI-altered.