Frequently Asked Questions

BackInTime is an AI-powered digital heritage platform that restores aged photographs and helps families preserve the stories behind them. It combines state-of-the-art AI restoration — scratch and tear removal, denoising, era-consistent colorization, super-resolution upscaling, and generative fill — with a permanent vault for your originals and a storytelling layer for family narrative.

Cloud storage apps treat old photographs like any other file — they offer no restoration, no heritage context, and no storytelling. One-tap restoration apps apply filters and return a flattened image with no archive, no provenance, and no connection to your family history. BackInTime is built as a long-term vault: your originals and restored versions live side by side with full version history, metadata, provenance records, and collaborative family workspaces. We call our approach Slow AI — a deliberate, transparent restoration experience that respects the material.

BackInTime is available on the web, iOS, and Android with full feature parity across all platforms.

Our restoration engine analyses your photograph and applies scratch and tear removal, denoising, colorization, super-resolution upscaling, and generative fill in a single carefully tuned pass. We offer multiple colorization styles — Vivid, Natural, Retro, Warm Tone, Cool Tone, and Sepia — and accept custom instructions so the result feels true to the original moment.

Most restorations complete within 1–2 minutes. More complex restorations may take up to 5 minutes depending on queue load and image size. We are deliberate about quality over speed — we call this Slow AI.

We support JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and HEIC. Maximum file size is 50MB per photo.

Every restored image we deliver includes a C2PA Content Credential — a tamper-evident provenance record that documents what AI was involved and how the image was processed. This is our commitment to archival transparency: anyone viewing the restored image can verify how it was produced.

Your original photograph is always preserved. You can view both the original and restored versions at any time, rerun the restoration with different settings, or refine a specific area. Every revision is versioned.

You can flag any restoration result that shows an AI hallucination or quality issue directly from the result screen. These reports help us tune the restoration pipeline and give you the option to redo the photo with adjusted settings.

A standard photo restoration costs 10 credits per photo. See our Pricing page for current plan details and for refinement pricing.

Yes. Every account starts with free credits so you can try the service before subscribing.

Yes. You can cancel from Account Settings → Billing. Your remaining credits stay available until the end of the billing period, and your photographs and stories are not deleted when you cancel — they remain accessible under the free plan.

By default, only you and the automated systems that process your restoration. Staff access is strictly restricted and logged. If you choose to share a restored photo with a specific person or make it publicly accessible, those recipients will also be able to view it — that sharing is your choice and under your control.

No. We do not train our AI on your photos without your separate, explicit, opt-in consent. If we ever wish to use User Content for model training, we will ask first, explain exactly what would be used and for how long, and allow you to withdraw consent at any time.

No. We never sell your photos or personal data to anyone. Ever.

For as long as your account is active. When you delete a photo or close your account, originals and restored photos are permanently purged within 30 days.

Coming soon. A self-serve data export is on our roadmap. In the meantime, if you need a copy of your photos and data, email [email protected] and we'll help you out.

A BackInTime Story is a curated collection of photographs anchored to a time, a place, and the people who lived through it — with room for written narrative, voice notes, and AI-assisted storytelling. Stories can be private, shared with family, or contributed to public community galleries.

The person who uploads a photograph owns it — always. Even when that photo lives inside a shared family Story, ownership does not transfer. Leaving a workspace never means losing your photographs.

Yes. BackInTime supports collaborative family workspaces with clear permission levels — contributors, curators, and viewers. Your whole family can work together on a single story while keeping individual photograph ownership intact.

From the photo detail or story detail screen, tap Share. You can share with a specific contact, generate a shareable link, or publish to a public gallery. You are always in control of what is shared and with whom.

Yes. Open the share settings for the photo or story and revoke the link at any time.

Visit our Help Center to send us a request directly, or email us at [email protected]. For business enquiries or partnerships, use our Contact Us page.

Please email [email protected]. See our Privacy Policy for the full list of your rights and how to exercise them.