Secure your PDF with strong password protection and encryption.
Reduce file size without losing quality.
Old documents scanned years ago often look yellowed, faded, speckled, or creased. Our AI‑powered restoration tool brings them back to life: remove age‑related yellowing, despeckle dust and scratches, repair crease shadows, sharpen faded text, and upscale resolution. Perfect for historians, genealogists, archivists, and anyone digitising family records. No software to install – your files are processed securely and automatically deleted.
Did you know? Over 80% of historical documents scanned before 2010 suffer from yellowing and fading. Our restoration can turn them into print‑ready, archive‑grade PDFs.
Old paper oxidises, creating a yellow/orange cast that reduces contrast. Our background neutralisation removes this cast.
Ink can fade to light brown or grey. Adaptive contrast recovers the original stroke darkness.
Physical damage over time creates speckles, lines, and scratches. Despeckle filter removes them.
Folds, dog‑ears, and creases create dark lines. Our crease detection smooths them out.
Bonus issue – low DPI (72‑150 DPI): Old scans were often digitised at low resolution. Our upscaling to 300 DPI recovers lost detail.
Upload your old scan – PDF or image. System analyses yellowing, fading, creases, and DPI.
Select restoration depth – Light (mild), Medium (recommended), or Strong (heavy fading/creasing).
Apply AI restoration – Background de‑yellowing, contrast recovery, despeckle, crease removal, and optional upscaling. Preview in real time.
Download the restored PDF – A clean, legible, archive‑ready document.
Pro Tip: If the document has text on both sides (bleed‑through), enable "Bleed‑through removal" – it isolates the front side and removes ghost text from the reverse.
For damaged documents with missing content, we recommend flattening the PDF first (our flatten tool) then applying restoration.
Libraries, museums, and genealogical societies often have thousands of old scans. Our dedicated archive mode applies consistent restoration across an entire collection, including de‑yellowing, despeckle, deskew, and upscaling to 300 DPI. Output is optimised for long‑term storage (PDF/A) and ready for OCR. Contact us for batch pricing and API access.
Real‑world example: A historical society restored 50,000 pages of 19th‑century newspapers. The enhanced PDFs were fully searchable after OCR, and the originals are now preserved digitally.
De‑yellowing, despeckle, and contrast adjustment alone add little size. Upscaling to 300 DPI is optional; for archiving, you may want to keep the original resolution and just clean the appearance. Use "Archive" preset (clean only, no upscale) for minimal size increase.
Tip: Keep an original unprocessed master copy. Use our restoration on working copies only, especially if you plan to OCR later.
⚡ Need to adjust DPI for print compliance?
Use our dedicated PDF DPI Changer to view, adjust, or standardise DPI metadata of cleaned contracts – perfect for court filing requirements and professional printing standards.
Old paper yellowing, ink fading, scanner dust, creases, and low‑DPI digitisation all contribute. Our restoration pipeline removes yellowing, corrects faded text, eliminates speckles, and reverses crease shadows.
Yes. Our background whitening algorithm models the yellowing gradient and neutralises it, returning the page to a clean white background without affecting the original text colour.
Basic restoration (de‑yellowing, despeckle, contrast) adds very little size. If you also upscale to 300 DPI, file size may increase, but our smart compression keeps it reasonable.
Yes, our inpainting-based crease removal detects dark lines from folds and digitally smooths them. For deep creases with missing content (tears), you may need manual editing, but most creases are eliminated.
Absolutely. The edge‑preserving sharpening and contrast enhancement work well on handwriting. For best results, scan at 300 DPI or higher first.
Yes. All uploads are encrypted with TLS 1.3 and automatically deleted within 24 hours. An offline version is available for archives with strict security policies.
Yes, the tool is fully responsive and works on iOS and Android. Upload from cloud storage or camera roll.
Upload your faded, yellowed, or damaged document and let AI restore it to pristine clarity.
Enhancing a PDF improves visual clarity by adjusting resolution, sharpening text edges, and increasing contrast between foreground and background elements. This process is particularly useful for scanned documents, blurry text, or faded paperwork.
Several factors may reduce the readability of a PDF document. Low-resolution scanning, aggressive compression, improper export settings, and camera-captured documents can all introduce blur or reduce contrast.
Modern PDF enhancement tools apply multiple processing techniques to improve readability.
PDF enhancement algorithms work by analyzing pixel density and grayscale distribution. Contrast adjustment increases the difference between text and background while sharpening filters reconstruct blurred edges. When combined with OCR preparation, enhancement dramatically improves machine readability.
Explore the full collection of tools in the PDF Enhancement Guide.