Why old photos are tricky
The photographs people most want to engrave, like a grandparent's portrait or a faded wedding shot, tend to be the worst raw material to work from. They were scanned at low resolution, faded by light over decades, scratched and creased, and saturated with film grain or scanner noise. A laser or CNC machine reproduces every defect faithfully, which is not what anyone wants.
Photo Studio has a chain of AI tools that handle each of those problems in sequence and never leave the browser. The order matters more than the individual tools, so this guide walks through it.
Start with a clean scan
Everything that follows is bounded by the scan, so spend a minute on it. Scan at 600 DPI minimum (1200 for wallet-sized prints), 24-bit colour or 16-bit grayscale, and save as TIFF or PNG rather than JPEG. JPEG block artifacts survive every later step including the AI upscaler, and they become visible burns in the engraving.
Wipe the glass with a microfiber cloth before scanning, because dust spots are forever. If the photo is curled, press it flat under a book on the lid. For torn pieces, align them as closely as you can; the AI editor can bridge small gaps but does better with less to invent. And scan slightly larger than you need, since you can always crop in Photo Studio.
The restoration order
Drop the scan into Photo Studio. If the resolution is low, the editor flags Upscale (2x) as strongly recommended, so run it. The AI upscaler does more than interpolate: it generates new edge detail and resolves features that were soft in the original. One pass is almost always the right amount, since a second pass adds mostly invented detail and starts to drift from the source. If you need more pixels than that, the right answer is a better scan, not more upscaling.
Repair what is left with the AI prompt box. The chips above the input cover the common operations: Enhance for general quality, Sharpen after upscaling, Brighten for faded shots, and B&W if a strong colour cast is throwing you off. For specific damage, write what you see, like "remove the scratch across the forehead," "fix the torn corner," or "remove the water stain on the left side of the face." The model inpaints the damaged area using surrounding context, which is why repairs work better when there is plenty of unaffected image to reference. Take it slow. Each AI pass introduces some generated content, and after three or four rounds a face can develop a subtle "wrong" quality that family members will spot even if they cannot articulate it.
Finish editing with the manual sliders. Old photos almost always benefit from a contrast bump of +15 to +30, which separates shadows from midtones and gives the laser distinct depth bands to burn. Sharpness in the 20 to 40 range tightens edges without amplifying noise; above 50 you are sharpening grain. Push contrast past +40 and you will clip the gentle tonal gradations that make a photograph read as a photograph.
Run Remove Background last, once your edits are done. For anything heading to Mesh Studio (crystal engraving) or Embossing Studio (height-map carving) it is optional but strongly recommended, because background noise turns into stray dots in the crystal or unwanted relief in the embossing, and the AI generates a precise alpha mask in a few seconds. Keep it last on purpose: with PHOTON (the default model) a later edit can bring the background back, so any AI repair belongs before this step. The more advanced WAVELENGTH model does not re-introduce it, so if you must touch the image afterwards, switch to WAVELENGTH or simply remove the background again.
From the export bar, send the result where it needs to go: Mesh Studio for crystal engravings and 3D memorial pieces, Embossing Studio for CNC relief carving and laser-embossed plaques, or plain Export for a flat raster engrave. The companion guides on embossing depth maps and photo to crystal pick up from there.