I’ve been working on a really meaningful project lately: digitizing and restoring a big collection of my family’s old photographs. Many of them are around 75–100 years old, and a few even older. Once I finished photographing all the prints with my Sony A6000, I finally had the chance to try Luminar’s brand-new AI Photo Restoration tool from their 2025 update.
I went into it with pretty realistic expectations, but I was honestly impressed. For a one-click tool, it did a remarkable job.
Here’s the full video where I walk through the setup, show the before-and-afters, and compare Luminar’s new AI Photo Restoration with Photoshop’s restoration tools.
How I Digitized the Photos
These prints are fragile, faded, and in various stages of falling apart. I’ve scanned negatives before, and while scanning works, it’s incredibly time-consuming. And honestly, the original image quality on these old prints is so low that scanning at ultra-high resolution doesn’t actually give you anything extra.
So instead, I photographed everything using a simple overhead setup:
- My Sony A6000 on a tripod with a Neweer Boom Arm
- Neweer Video Lighting Kit
- A remote shutter release so I wasn’t touching the camera
- Sony Imaging Edge to tether the camera
- A Lightroom watch folder so every photo imported automatically
My brother helped too. He’d place each print on the table, hit the shutter, and pass it along to me so I could add keywords and notes. It made the whole process much faster and a lot more enjoyable.
Luminar vs Photoshop: How the Restorations Compared
Once all the digitizing was done, I tried restoring the images in both Luminar and Photoshop and the differences were interesting.
Luminar AI Photo Restoration (2025 Update)
Luminar really surprised me. On many of the photos, the results were honestly astounding. It cleaned up scratches, fading, dust, and damage with a single click, and the overall impact of the restoration was much stronger than what I got out of Photoshop.
That said, there were a couple of drawbacks:
- Faces – sometimes Luminar handled them beautifully, but other times it created strange expressions and wonky eyes that weren’t in the original photo.
- The exported images come out at a lower resolution than the files I brought in, which is something to keep in mind if you need maximum detail.
Even with those quirks, the speed and quality were impressive. Keep in mind that this is a brand new tool from Luminar and I expect that in the future the tool will get even better.
Photoshop Photo Restoration Neural Filter
Photoshop produced more natural-looking faces, and I appreciated having sliders so I could fine-tune the results. It also kept the files at their original resolution.
But Photoshop had its own limitations:
- The results weren’t as sharp or dramatic as Luminar’s.
- There’s no colourizing option in the Neural Filter.
- The overall effect, while clean, didn’t quite have the same “wow” factor.
Bottom Line
Luminar delivered the most striking restorations overall – sometimes perfect, sometimes not. Photoshop was more consistent and controlled, especially with faces, but lacked the punch that Luminar created so easily.
Try Luminar
If you’re interested in trying Luminar’s photo restoration tool, pick up the free trial here. It’s a great tool that I use it all the time for other effects like Glow, Mystical, and the new Light Depth tool.
Get Luminar Here
Use thisdiscount code in the cart for an extra 10% off: MCKINNELL20
It’s a one-time purchase. Buy once, own forever. Includes one year of upgrades.
Final Thoughts
This project felt like such a gift – not just to preserve some old family history, but also to see what’s possible with the new restoration tools we have today. Luminar made the process incredibly fast, and Photoshop added refinement when I needed it.
If you have a stack of old family photos sitting in a shoebox somewhere, now might be the perfect time to bring them back to life.
Take a look at imgfix.co for colorizing. I have been very pleased with the results.
I will check it out, thanks Flloyd!
Thanks for the reply. I can successfully drag-drop from at least 3 other apps, but not from Lightroom. That said, I’ve never been able to drag-drop from LR, so I think it’s a limitation of the old version that I am running. Oh well.. one more disadvantage of refusing to go along with the subscription model.
Did you do any special configuration to enable drag and drop between LR and Luminar? It does not work on my setup. ChatGPT states that drag and drop is not supported by LR or by Luminar, although I understand ChatGPT is prone to make up answers. I do have an old LR version, so that may be the issue (still on LR6 to retain the perpetual licence).
Hi Jack, no no special configuration. I’ve tried it with different file types and they all seem to work. One thing is that you have to drop it in the main Luminar window. If you try to drop it in the sidebar it wont work. So make your Lightroom window smaller so you can see the main Luminar window behind it and when you drag your file over there, you should see a little green box with a + in it. Make sure you can see that before you let the mouse button go to drop it. Hope that makes sense! Let me know if it works. I get these kinds of questions all the time and sometimes it’s hard to figure out why it works in one case and not in other cases.
I am interested in the upgrade for my existing Luminar licence, but I don’t see it on their website. Am I overlooking something?
Hi Jack, Yes, you have to login first to see the upgrade. They only show it to you if you qualify for it. Let me know if you have any problems.
What lens did you use?
Hi Travis, I used my Sony 16-70mm. It is a Zeiss lens so it’s a beauty. I thought I might have to use my 90mm macro to get that close, but my Zeiss focussed fine at that distance and it gave me a bit of zoom when I needed it instead of changing the camera position. Excellent question.
That was a fascinating illustration. I am not familiar with using the software but was fun to see what you can do with it!
Thanks Sandy, it is really fun to bring back these old photos. I am keeping the originals, and then on some I am doing a black and white restoration and on a few a full colour restoration. I forgot to mention in the video how much I like the muted tones Luminar picks for the colours so they don’t look fake. I appreciate your visit and comments!
Thanks for elaborating, Anne. I expected a macro lens would have been needed. Interesting that it wasn’t. How many MP does that camera have? Is that what makes the difference do you think? Have you blown any of the photos up to a larger size? If so, do they still look good? Thanks again for the post, video, and answers to my questions.
Anytime Travis, I’m happy to answer questions! My Sony A6000 is 24MP. I don’t think that the mega pixels make that much of a difference because the original photos are such poor quality compared to what you get today. That’s why I don’t bother scanning them. But, one thing to remember is that not all mega pixels are created equally. So, for example, a phone camera might have 24MP too, but the sensor is tiny and so all the mega pixels are tiny. That makes a difference. I would definitely use a proper camera and not a phone. The photos I made are larger than the originals because some of the originals were only a few inches and I zoomed in with the lens. They are soft for sure (but a lot of them were just out of focus to begin with). Some of them are super grainy. During the photo restoration I was able to sharpen them up and remove the scratches and defects. I did try to upscale them using both photoshop and luminar and in both cases the results were not good. Upscaling doesn’t seem to help matters. I tried upscaling and then restoring – and I also tried restoring and then upscaling – and neither created good results.
Very good inputs, Anne. This sounds like a fun project. I’d like to try it with my Mother’s photos. Your inspiration certainly helps me get going on that. I just need to finish a few other projects first 😉 That’s what so great about photography, right? There’s so many project to do.
Always lots of new project to work on, and new things to learn. That is one of the best things about photography!