GIMP vs free online restorers, no contest after 30 photos

I spent the last 3 weekends cleaning up my grandpa's 1940s Navy photos. Tried those free websites first, the ones where you upload and it auto-fixes. They smoothed everything into a blurry mess, like a bad filter. Then I sat down with GIMP and watched a 20 minute tutorial on the healing tool. Night and day. The scratches and fold lines actually vanished without wrecking the detail on his uniform. Has anyone else given up on the auto stuff and gone manual?

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kevin_adams27d ago

The auto restorers did fine for my own photos, so maybe you just got bad luck with the ones you tried. GIMP takes real skill and time, which not everyone has sitting around after work. For a casual family snapshot, the blurry look beats a ten hour learning curve.