ArtImageHub vs Facetune for Old Photo Restoration

Facetune is one of the most popular portrait retouching apps — millions of users use it to enhance selfies and modern portraits. ArtImageHub is a specialized AI pipeline for old photo restoration. Both touch faces and improve photographs; they're built for entirely different problems.

---

What Facetune Does

Facetune is a modern portrait enhancement app with a focus on skin, face, and body:

Portrait tools:

• Smooth: skin smoothing and blemish removal
• Whiten: teeth and eye whitening
• Reshape: face slimming, nose and jaw adjustment
• Retouch: detailed skin retouching
• Makeup: virtual makeup application

Photo editing:

• Filters and effects
• Background blur
• Light and color adjustments

AI features (Facetune AI):

• AI Face Retouch: automated skin smoothing and enhancement
• AI Backdrop: AI background generation
• AI Reshape: AI-guided body and face reshaping

Facetune is designed for modern smartphone photography — high-resolution digital photos where faces are clearly captured and the goal is cosmetic enhancement.

---

Why Facetune Doesn't Work for Old Photos

It's designed for modern portrait photography. The models underlying Facetune's face enhancement are trained on contemporary digital photos — clear skin texture, modern lighting, high resolution. When applied to old photographs:

• The skin smoothing tools work on whatever texture is present — they smooth the degraded, faded texture of old photo paper, not skin
• The whitening tools adjust brightness in targeted areas — they don't restore original tonal values lost to decades of fading
• The reshape tools work on detected facial landmarks — difficult to detect accurately on heavily degraded 1940s portraits

No damage removal: Facetune has no tool for removing scratches, water stains, or physical damage from old prints.

No systematic fading correction: Facetune's brightness adjustments are local and face-focused — not the systematic historical photographic paper fading correction that GFPGAN provides.

No colorization: Facetune cannot colorize black-and-white photos.

---

Comparison

| Factor | Facetune | ArtImageHub | |--------|----------|-------------| | Cost | Free (limited) / $5.99/month | $4.99 one-time | | Platform | iOS/Android app | Browser-based | | Target use case | Modern selfie/portrait enhancement | Old photo restoration | | Historical face reconstruction | ❌ Modern face tools only | ✅ CodeFormer | | Fading correction | ❌ No | ✅ GFPGAN | | Scratch removal | ❌ No | ✅ Yes | | Colorization | ❌ No | ✅ Yes | | Subscription required | For most features | No |

---

When Facetune Makes Sense with Old Photos

After restoration: Once an old photo is restored and digitized at HD quality, Facetune could theoretically apply cosmetic enhancements — if that's desired. Most people restoring historical family photos want faithful recovery, not cosmetic modification.

For modern photos: Facetune is excellent for what it's designed for — modern portrait enhancement for social media and personal use.

---

Bottom Line

Facetune is a category leader in modern portrait retouching. Old photo restoration isn't its category. For historical photographs with fading, scratches, and lost face detail, CodeFormer-based restoration produces results that Facetune's tools can't approach — because the underlying models are built for completely different types of image degradation.

Restore your old family photos at ArtImageHub — $4.99 one-time →

Results in 30–90 seconds · HD download · 30-day guarantee

---

Related

• ArtImageHub vs Snapseed — free mobile editor comparison
• How to Restore Old Photos on iPhone — iOS restoration guide
• How to Restore Old Photos on Android — Android restoration guide
• Best AI Tools for Old Photo Restoration in 2026 — 7-tool ranked comparison