The new AI-powered Restore Photos tool in Photoshop Elements 2026 makes reviving old or damaged photos easier than ever. With just one click, it automatically removes dust, scratches, blemishes, and other imperfections, giving your cherished memories a beautifully refreshed look — like time travel for your photo album!

How to Use: You will find this tool in the Enhance menu, Restore Photo. It is just below Change Object Color. To use, open a photo that needs restoration then click on Restore Photo. The first time you use the tool you will need to download the tool from Adobe. It is an 850 MB file and should download quickly. This download is only needed on first use. 

Once the cleanup has been applied you will find some options on the right hand side. I have found that the default settings give me the best results. The first 3 sliders are for Enhance Face, Photo Enhancements and for Scratch Reduction. Keep in mind that the higher these sliders are pushed the more blurring you will see in the image so you want to keep these sliders to the lowest setting that gives satisfactory results. The enhance face basically lowers the amount of cleanup on the face thereby limiting blurring.

The next section is the Adjustments, where you can adjust settings for Noise Reduction, Color Noise Reduction, and Desaturate. Again I found that these controls seem to work best at their default settings.

This is a great tool for handling basic dust and scratches. More advanced image fixes will still have to be done using older standard techniques like clone stamp work. On the whole I consider this a great first step when doing a photo restoration job. The photo will still need more work and this tool will not be appropriate for all images but when it works it is a great time saver.