Home · Apps · Refoto: Scan & Restore Photos
Photography · On Google PlayLay four prints on the table. Take one photo.
Refoto finds every print in the shot, straightens each one into its own upright picture, and repairs what age did to it — the yellow cast, the lost contrast, the dust and the speckling. It runs entirely on your phone, and it is one payment rather than a subscription.
Everyone's family has a shoebox.
Refoto: lay the prints down, take one photo, get straightened, restored scans - on the phone, no subscription.
What Refoto does.
Capture and restoration in one app — the two halves the category has kept apart for years.
Several prints, one shot
Lay a handful of photographs on a table and take a single picture. The viewfinder outlines each print it finds and counts them as you frame, so you know before the shutter, not after.
Squared up automatically
Every print is lifted out and perspective-corrected into its own upright image, so a photo taken at an angle over a kitchen table comes out looking like a scan.
It tells you what is wrong
Each print is measured for colour cast, fade, speckling and softness, and the app says so in words — “this print looks faded and yellowed” — so you can agree or disagree rather than guess at five numbers.
A restoration you can argue with
One master strength slider, five individual stages underneath, and a before-and-after seam you can drag straight across a face to see exactly what changed.
It corrects the lamp, not the sky
A phone held over a print never lights it evenly. Refoto measures the lighting from the surface around your photographs rather than from the pictures themselves, so it flattens the lamp without flattening a sunset.
Nothing is uploaded
Capture, detection, analysis and restoration all run on the phone. Your family photographs are never sent anywhere and are never used to train anything.
Made for the shoebox in the cupboard.
Digitising a family archive is work that finishes — which is why it is a purchase, not a monthly bill.
Questions, answered.
Is it out yet?
Yes. Refoto is live on Google Play and free to install — scanning and restore previews cost nothing, and the one-time unlock is there when you want to save at full size.
Can I scan several photos at once?
Yes — that is the point of it. Lay four or five prints on a table, take one photograph, and each one is detected, straightened and saved as its own image. Most photo scanners make you do them one at a time.
Is there a photo restoration app without a subscription?
Refoto is one. Scanning and restore previews are always free, and full-resolution saving is a single one-time unlock rather than a monthly charge — because digitising a shoebox is work that finishes.
What does the free version give me?
Unlimited scanning and unlimited restore previews, plus five saved restorations capped at 1200 pixels on the long edge. The one-time unlock removes both the count and the size cap.
What damage can it actually fix?
The colour cast old prints acquire, faded contrast, dust and scratches, grain, and softness — plus the uneven lighting from photographing a print by lamp. A torn or missing region needs a different kind of tool and is not something Refoto claims to do.
Do my photos get uploaded?
No. Everything happens on the phone — capture, detection, the analysis and every restoration stage. Nothing is sent to a server and nothing is used to train anything.
Can I use photos already on my phone?
Yes. Import from your photo library and it runs the same detect-and-straighten path, with a one-tap “use the whole photo instead” for an old scan that is already a finished picture and should not be split.
Why does it ask for network access?
It does not use one. The Google Play billing library adds that permission to the app so purchases can work, and billing is the only thing that touches it. No photograph ever goes near it.
Where do the restored photos go?
Into the app’s own library, and out to your device photo library or your share sheet whenever you choose. The originals on your table stay exactly where they are.
Start on the shoebox in the cupboard.
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