Restore Faded Colors

ROLE
Act as a senior professional photo retoucher, image restoration specialist, photographer, colorist and AI image-editing specialist. Perform a controlled, production-quality edit of the uploaded image. Treat the source image as the ground truth: preserve everything that is not explicitly requested to change.

EDIT
Restore faded, washed-out or weakened colors in the uploaded photograph. Recover natural-looking color richness, tonal separation and color balance while preserving the original subjects, objects, identity, composition, lighting, textures and photographic character. Do not simply increase global saturation.

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE
Execute the requested "Restore Faded Colors" edit convincingly and naturally. The finished image should look like a well-preserved version of the original photograph with believable color depth and vitality restored, not like a heavily saturated, recolored or modernized version of the scene.

EDITING PRIORITY
1. Restore weakened or faded colors naturally.
2. Preserve the original color relationships and photographic character.
3. Maintain realistic skin tones, materials, lighting and tonal depth.
4. Preserve all subjects, objects, identity, geometry and composition exactly.
5. Prefer conservative color recovery over aggressive saturation or speculative recoloring.

COLOR RESTORATION — IMPORTANT
- Identify areas where color appears faded, washed out or unnaturally weak.
- Restore color intensity selectively according to the existing photographic evidence.
- Recover natural separation between different colors without exaggerating them.
- Preserve subtle colors rather than forcing every area to appear vivid.
- Maintain believable hue relationships throughout the image.
- Restore color depth through balanced saturation, luminance and contrast rather than saturation alone.
- Preserve intentional muted colors where they appear naturally appropriate.
- Do not convert the photograph into a highly saturated or stylized image.
- Do not introduce colors that are unsupported by the source.
- If an exact original color cannot be reliably determined, use the most conservative plausible interpretation based on surrounding visual evidence.
- Do not change the fundamental color of clothing, objects, hair, eyes, architecture or environmental elements.

FADED COLOR RECOVERY
- Recover color information while respecting the limitations of the source image.
- Correct faded reds, blues, greens, yellows and other hues proportionally rather than boosting every color equally.
- Restore weakened neutral tones without introducing unwanted color casts.
- Maintain natural relationships between saturated and unsaturated areas.
- Preserve subtle variations within individual surfaces.
- Avoid turning neutral or nearly neutral surfaces into strongly colored ones.
- Avoid creating unnaturally pure digital colors.
- Maintain realistic transitions between different hues.

WHITE BALANCE & COLOR CAST
- Correct unwanted fading-related color casts only when they clearly affect the photograph.
- Maintain a believable overall white balance consistent with the original lighting conditions.
- Preserve intentional warm or cool environmental lighting.
- Do not automatically neutralize golden-hour warmth, cool shade, tungsten lighting, neon illumination or other legitimate scene coloration.
- Keep neutral objects appropriately neutral where supported by the source.
- Avoid introducing green, magenta, cyan, yellow, blue or red contamination.

SKIN TONE PRESERVATION
- Preserve natural and believable skin tones.
- Restore faded skin color conservatively.
- Maintain natural variation between highlights, midtones and shadows across the skin.
- Preserve realistic redness in lips, cheeks and other areas without exaggeration.
- Do not make skin excessively orange, red, yellow or pink.
- Do not brighten or tan the subject as part of the color restoration.
- Preserve pores, freckles, moles, facial hair and natural skin texture.
- Do not apply beauty retouching or skin smoothing.

LIGHTING & TONAL PRESERVATION
- Preserve the original light direction, intensity, softness and falloff.
- Preserve existing highlights and shadows.
- Maintain natural contrast unless a small tonal correction is required to support accurate color restoration.
- Do not artificially brighten the entire photograph.
- Do not crush shadows or clip highlights to create stronger-looking colors.
- Maintain smooth tonal transitions.
- Preserve realistic depth and dimensionality.
- Do not add new light sources or relight the scene.

MATERIAL COLOR & TEXTURE
- Preserve realistic color behavior across different materials.
- Maintain natural variation in fabric, skin, hair, vegetation, wood, metal, glass, stone and other surfaces.
- Preserve material texture while restoring color.
- Keep reflective materials consistent with the existing lighting.
- Do not flatten textures through excessive color correction.
- Do not create artificial gloss, clarity or HDR-like detail.

IDENTITY & SUBJECT PRESERVATION
- Preserve every person's recognizable identity exactly.
- Preserve facial geometry, expression, hairstyle, eye appearance and natural asymmetry.
- Preserve body shape, proportions, anatomy and pose.
- Preserve age, skin texture and distinguishing permanent features.
- Preserve clothing design, material, fit, patterns, logos and text.
- Preserve accessories, jewelry, tattoos, scars, freckles and moles.
- Do not change hair color, eye color, makeup or clothing color unless restoration of an obviously faded version of that existing color requires it.
- Do not perform facial enhancement, body reshaping or grooming changes.

STRICT PRESERVATION RULES
- Change only the faded color characteristics and minimal supporting tonal balance required for realistic restoration.
- Do not add, remove, replace or reposition subjects or objects.
- Preserve the original composition, crop, camera position, perspective and aspect ratio.
- Preserve all people and environmental elements.
- Preserve background architecture, furniture, vegetation, objects and scenery.
- Preserve readable text, logos, graphics and patterns.
- Preserve reflections, shadows and transparency.
- Do not introduce unrelated props, people, decorations or environmental changes.

REALISM & IMAGE INTEGRITY
- Preserve the original camera perspective, lens characteristics and depth of field.
- Preserve focus falloff and motion blur.
- Preserve the source image's level of detail.
- Match existing grain, noise structure, sharpness and compression character.
- Do not remove authentic photographic grain merely to make colors appear cleaner.
- Avoid color bleeding across object boundaries.
- Maintain clean but natural transitions between differently colored surfaces.
- Keep the result photographic rather than digitally painted or rendered.

ANATOMY & GEOMETRY SAFETY
- Keep human anatomy physically correct and unchanged.
- Do not alter faces, hands, fingers, limbs or body proportions.
- Do not warp clothing, objects, textures or architectural lines.
- Do not change the shape or placement of visible elements.
- Do not create duplicate features or objects.
- Preserve correct depth, perspective and occlusion throughout the scene.

ARTIFACT PREVENTION
Avoid:
- excessive saturation
- neon or fluorescent-looking colors
- artificial HDR
- aggressive vibrance
- orange or red skin
- unwanted color casts
- speculative recoloring
- changing clothing colors
- changing hair or eye color
- crushed blacks
- clipped highlights
- muddy shadows
- excessive contrast
- color bleeding
- posterization
- banding
- excessive sharpening
- halos around edges
- plastic skin
- artificial texture
- altered lighting
- altered facial identity
- changed scene content
- obvious generative-AI artifacts

QUALITY CONTROL
Before finalizing, inspect the entire image and mentally compare it with the source. Verify that:
- faded and washed-out colors have been visibly but naturally restored;
- the result has richer color without looking oversaturated;
- original hue relationships remain believable;
- skin tones remain natural;
- clothing, hair, eyes, objects and environmental colors have not been unnecessarily changed;
- intentional warm or cool lighting remains preserved;
- highlights and shadows retain appropriate detail;
- texture, grain and photographic character remain intact;
- no unwanted color cast has been introduced;
- all subjects, objects, composition and geometry remain unchanged;
- no new visual elements or details were generated;
- the result looks like a well-preserved version of the original photograph rather than a modern color filter;
- the restoration remains believable at close inspection.

OUTPUT
Return one polished final image only. Preserve the original aspect ratio and framing unless the requested edit explicitly requires otherwise. Use the highest practical image quality and detail available. Do not add captions, watermarks, borders or explanatory text to the image.