Takes out the damage
Creases, scratches, stains, a missing corner, the dust of a scan. The model fills back in what the paper has lost over the years.
Windows · runs on your GPU · beta
Their photographs, restored on your own computer.
Lume repairs the damaged photographs of someone who is no longer here: it takes out the creases and the stains, brings back the detail a poor scan had lost, and gives colour to black and white. All of it happens on your graphics card. No photograph is ever uploaded anywhere.
Version 0.2.0 · 22 MB · Windows 11, NVIDIA graphics card
An illustration, not a real photograph.
How it works
- 1
Point it at a folder
Scans, photographs of an old print taken with a phone, frames pulled out of a video. Lume reads the folder and works through it one file at a time.
- 2
The work happens on your GPU
The models are downloaded once, then they run on your own graphics card. There is no account to create, and the program keeps working with the network switched off.
- 3
Look at the comparison
Every photograph is shown before and after. If the result does not convince you, nothing has been lost: the original is opened read-only and is never written over.
- 4
Keep what you want
The restored copies go into a folder you choose, as ordinary image files. No library to open, no format that only this program can read.
What it does today
Brings back the detail
Small or blurred photographs are enlarged up to four times, and faces get back the features a low-resolution scan had flattened.
Gives colour to black and white
Plausible colour, worked out by the model from the light, the skin and the fabrics. It is an interpretation, and the program says so: the black and white original is always kept.
Works through a whole folder
Hundreds of photographs in one run. You start it and come back later; if you stop it, it picks up from the ones it had not reached.
13 languages
The program speaks Italian, English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Turkish, Russian, Ukrainian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
Open source
The code is public, under the AGPL. Anyone can read what the program does with the files it is given — which, for photographs like these, is the only promise worth anything.
Where the project is
Lume is being built in stages, and only the first one is in your hands today. This is what is being worked on and what is still a plan, written honestly rather than promised.
- 1in progress
Restoring the photographs
Taking out the damage, super-resolution, colour for black and white.
- 2planned
The same face at another age
Seeing a portrait as it would have looked twenty years earlier or later, to fill the gaps every family album has.
- 3planned
The voice
Male and female voice profiles and, where a recording survives, a voice built from that recording.
- 4planned
A portrait that speaks
A photograph animated in two dimensions, so that the face moves while the voice speaks.
- 5planned
A presence in three dimensions
A MetaHuman face in Unreal Engine, built from the restored photographs.
- 6planned
Memory and conversation
A profile written from what the family remembers — the stories, the turns of phrase, the opinions — so that the conversation sounds like that person. It stays what it is: a way of keeping a memory, not the person.
Nothing ever leaves your computer
This is not a feature on a list. It is the reason the project was built this way: photographs, recordings and family memories are not material to hand over to a company.
- There is no server to hand them to. Lume has none — no account, no sign-in, no cloud storage.
- The models run on your graphics card. They are downloaded once, from their public repositories, and after that the program works with the network switched off.
- Your photographs stay in your folders. The program writes its copies next to them and never sends, uploads or shares a file.
- No advertising, no analytics, no telemetry. Nobody is counting what you restore.
What you need
It is a desktop program, and the work is done by the graphics card: without one there is nothing to run the models on.
- Windows 11, 64-bit.
- An NVIDIA graphics card with at least 8 GB of video memory. Developed on an RTX 4070 with 12 GB.
- About 20 GB of free disk space for the models, downloaded the first time and then kept.
- From stage 5 onwards, for the three-dimensional face: Unreal Engine 5.5 or 5.6 with the MetaHuman plugin.
Support the project
Lume is free, with no subscription and no advertising, and it will stay that way. If it gave you back a photograph you thought was lost, a coffee is the whole business model.
Questions
Is it really all offline?
Yes. The network is used twice: the first time, to download the models, and — if you leave the check switched on — to find out whether a new version of the program is out. Your photographs are part of neither. You can restore a whole album with the cable pulled out.
Does it alter the original photograph?
Never. Originals are opened read-only, and the restored versions are written as new files in a folder you choose. If a result does not convince you, you delete the copy and nothing has been lost.
Is the colour the real colour?
No, and the program does not claim it is. Colourisation is the model's guess from the light, the skin, the fabrics and the setting: a plausible colour, not a documented one. That dress may well have been another colour. The black and white is always kept, and it is the one to trust.
Can I use it for photographs that are not portraits?
Yes. Landscapes, houses, documents, group photographs: taking out the damage and enlarging work on anything. Only the part dedicated to faces is built specifically for portraits.
And the later stages — the voice, the face that speaks?
They are not ready, and this page says so rather than promising a date. They will arrive one at a time, and each one will be optional: restoring photographs will always work on its own, for anyone who wants nothing more than that.
Is this a way of bringing someone back?
No, and it would be wrong to say otherwise. It is a way of looking after a memory: a photograph you can see clearly again, a familiar voice, a face to talk to about what you remember. It replaces nobody and does not pretend to. If using it hurts more than it helps, stop — that is not a failure on your part.