# How to repair and restore photos: spots, red eye, old prints and lenses > The Windows Editor tab heals spots, fixes red eye, turns scanned negatives positive, restores old prints and upscales photos 2× or 4×. Originals stay untouched. Source: https://firelet.media/help/repair-and-restore-photos Published: 2026-11-08 · Updated: 2026-11-08 Applies to: Windows firelet.media Gallery repairs photos in the **Editor** tab on Windows ([[Ctrl]]+[[3]]). The **Repair** section heals dust and blemishes, fixes red eye, turns scanned negatives into positives and restores faded, scratched old prints. **Lens and perspective** straightens leaning buildings and corrects lens distortion. As with every edit in the gallery, the original file is never changed. ## Remove spots and blemishes: Heal and Clone **Heal** blends a spot into its surroundings: dust on a scan, a blemish, a stray power line. **Clone** copies another area over it exactly, which suits hard edges and patterns. 1. Open the photo in the Editor and click **Repair**. 2. Click **Heal** (or **Clone**) under **Spots**. 3. Set **Size** a little larger than the spot, plus **Feather** and **Opacity**. 4. Click the spot on the photo. A solid circle marks it and a dashed circle shows where the repair comes from. 5. If the result looks wrong, drag the dashed circle to a cleaner area. Right-click a spot to remove it, or click **Remove all spots** to start again. You can click a spot again later to select it and change its size. > [!TIP] > For a large object such as a person in the background, the **Magic eraser** in **AI tools** is quicker. See [how to edit part of a photo with masks and AI tools](https://firelet.media/help/masks-and-ai-photo-edits). ## Fix red eye 1. Click **Find red eyes**. The gallery looks at each face it finds and fixes the red pupils, then says how many it fixed. 2. If it misses one, click **Click an eye…** and click each red pupil. 3. Right-click a pupil to undo just that one, or click **Clear** to undo them all. **Find red eyes** uses Windows' own face detector. If your copy of Windows doesn't have one, the gallery says so, and you click each eye instead. ## Turn a scanned negative into a positive Under **Film negative**, click **Colour negative** or **Black-and-white negative**. The gallery turns the scan positive and "takes away the orange of colour film". Fine-tune the result with **Light** and **Colour**. **Not a negative** turns it off again. When you scan negatives with the gallery itself, the scanner's **Film** option does this for you: each frame is turned positive with an edit, and the scanned file stays as it is. [How to scan photos and documents](https://firelet.media/help/scan-photos-and-documents) covers scanning. ## Restore an old photo in one click For faded, scratched prints, the **Old photo** tools at the top of **Repair** use AI that runs on your PC: 1. Open the scan in the Editor and click **Repair**. 2. Leave **Add colour** ticked to colourise a black-and-white photo, or untick it to keep it monochrome. It is ticked by itself when the photo looks black and white. 3. Click **Restore old photo**. It fixes scratches, then noise, then adds colour if asked. 4. Watch the progress line; click **Stop** if you change your mind. Each step is also a button of its own: **Fix scratches**, **AI denoise**, **Unblur** and **Colourise**. The first time you use one, the gallery asks before downloading its AI model. > [!NOTE] > These tools work at full size, so a large photo can take a few minutes. The result is kept beside the library and drawn over the photo, and **Undo** takes it back. If you tick **AI edits make a new photo** in **Library**, the result becomes a new file instead, such as `photo (restored).jpg`. ## Make a photo bigger: AI upscale Under **Upscale**, click **2× as a new photo** or **4× as a new photo**. The gallery "writes a larger copy beside the original, with your edits", such as `photo (upscaled 2×).jpg`, adds it to the library and opens it in the Editor. A very large photo may be too big for 4×; try 2×, or crop it first. To enlarge many photos at once, use **AI upscale** (**2×** or **4×**) in the Export window instead. See [how to export photos](https://firelet.media/help/export-photos). ## Correct lens distortion and perspective The **Lens and perspective** section fixes what the camera's lens and angle did: - **Use the lens profile** corrects distortion, colour fringes and dark corners for the lens that took the photo, using the lensfun database. The profiles are a one-time download. The gallery shows the profile it found, or says the photo doesn't name its lens. - **Distortion**, **Vignetting**, **Red/cyan fringe** and **Blue/yellow fringe** do the same by hand. - **Auto upright** "stands leaning verticals upright and levels the photo". Ideal for buildings shot from below. - **Vertical** and **Horizontal** tilt the perspective by hand. The gallery zooms in a little to hide the empty edges a correction leaves. Use **Crop and rotate** afterwards if you want a different frame. ## Where repairs are kept Spots, red eyes, the negative setting and lens corrections are edits like any other: saved in the library, listed in **History** and undone with [[Ctrl]]+[[Z]]. The AI repairs are kept beside the library, in the `ai` folder under `%LOCALAPPDATA%\PictureGallery`. Back that folder up with `gallery.db`, as [how to back up your photos and your library](https://firelet.media/help/back-up-photos-and-library) explains. When you want a finished file, export it with **With my edits — crop, turn, light and colour** ticked: every repair is in the copy, and the scan is untouched. [Does firelet.media Gallery change my original photos?](https://firelet.media/help/are-original-files-changed) explains why. ## Questions ### Does restoring an old photo replace the scan? No. The result is kept beside the library and drawn over the photo; the scanned file is not changed. Undo takes it back. ### Why can't Find red eyes find any faces? It uses Windows' own face detector, which some copies of Windows don't have. Use Click an eye… and click each red pupil instead. ### Where does an upscaled photo go? Next to the original, as a new file such as 'photo (upscaled 2×).jpg'. It is added to the library and opens in the Editor.