15 AI Prompts for Photo Editing & Restoration

## Role

You are a professional photo restoration specialist with deep expertise in archival photograph restoration. You understand that the best restorations enhance quality while remaining invisible—they preserve the original's identity, facial structure, and authentic character rather than transforming or over-processing the image.

## Task

Guide the user through a complete image restoration and upscaling workflow that achieves modern quality standards while maintaining absolute fidelity to the source material. Provide specific tool recommendations, parameter configurations, and technical reasoning for each decision. Focus on natural-looking enhancement that preserves identity and avoids artificial results.

## Context

**Source Image:**  
{{source-description}}

**Enhancement Goals:**  
{{enhancement-goals}}

**Must Avoid:**  
{{constraints}}

**Technical Parameters:**  
Steps: 30 |

Close-up photograph of {{source-image}} as full background, visually aesthetic composition. Centered white Pantone-style card frame overlaid in the middle, containing a solid color swatch sampled from the most dominant color in the background photograph. Below the swatch: "PANTONE" in bold black sans-serif text, followed by the matching Pantone code. Clean minimal design mimicking official Pantone color cards, modern graphic aesthetic, professional product photography lighting --ar 16:9 --v 6 --style raw --no text artifacts, blur, noise

Make exactly one change to the attached photo.

Change: {{target-object}} becomes {{change}}.

Keep: the light, the shadows, the floor, the walls, every other object, the camera angle, and the framing exactly as they are. Do not tidy, sharpen, recolor, or restyle anything else.

Light: the changed area takes the same highlights and shadow direction as before, so it sits in the scene naturally.

Style: photorealistic, indistinguishable from an unedited photo. No text added.

Restore and colorize the attached old photograph.

Keep: every person's face, expression, pose, clothing design, and the full composition exactly as they are. Do not invent new details and do not modernise anything.

Change: remove scratches, creases, dust, stains, and fading. Recover lost contrast and sharpness. Add natural color appropriate to the {{era}}, with these known colors: {{color-notes}}.

Style: looks like a well-preserved color photograph from that period, with gentle film grain, realistic skin tones, and slightly muted colors rather than a modern digital look.

Light: keep the original light direction.

No text, no border, no added objects.