PhotoBoost - AI Photo Enhancer

Review by eFreeware

Most of us have a drawer, a folder or a cloud backup full of photos we never got around to fixing. Blurry shots from an older phone, a scan of a faded print, a black-and-white portrait of relatives we can barely make out. The tools to repair that sort of thing used to mean desktop software and some patience. PhotoBoost is one of the phone apps trying to collapse that work into a few taps.

It comes from Tap AI and sits in the Photography category on Google Play. The app is free to download, carries advertising and offers in-app purchases. It has been picked up widely, with more than 10 million installs and a 4.6 average across 781,522 ratings, and it first appeared in December 2022.

Avatars are the headline act

The feature the developer leads with is not restoration at all, but AI avatars. You feed the app a selfie and it turns that photo into a new creation, sorted into themed collections. The themes cover seasonal occasions like Christmas and New Year, fantasy figures such as knights, elves and mythical characters, polished headshots meant for work or a resume, art styles inspired by Van Gogh or Cubism, and pop culture or futuristic looks. New themes are added over time, and the developer describes the library as the widest available.

Speed is part of the pitch. Tap AI says an avatar can be generated in under three seconds, and that the output stays detailed and personal rather than generic. Those are marketing claims rather than anything a reviewer can confirm from a listing, so treat them as the developer's promises. The intended use is clear: you pick a theme, hand over a selfie and get back something stylized.

This is the part of the app with the broadest appeal. A themed avatar is easy to share, easy to set as a profile picture and easy to make in a spare moment. The variety of styles is the selling point here, since a single portrait style would wear thin quickly.

The repair tools underneath

The other half of PhotoBoost is more conventional photo repair. Blurry, pixelated or low-resolution files are sharpened toward high definition, which the developer frames as useful for social posts and family pictures. Old photos with scratches, damage or fading can be repaired, and black-and-white images can be colorized. There is also upscaling, which enlarges an image while aiming to keep the quality intact, and the developer points to printing or framing as the reason you would want that.

Before-and-after comparisons are built in, so you can put the original and the enhanced version side by side. That is a small feature but a useful one: it is how you judge whether an enhancement helped or simply smoothed everything into plastic. The app also covers digitizing vintage family albums, which is the same restoration work applied at volume rather than a separate tool.

Taken together, the app covers a sensible range for a phone-based editor. Sharpening, restoring, colorizing and enlarging are the four jobs most people actually need, and they are presented as one workflow rather than four separate apps.

What it costs and what it asks of you

PhotoBoost is free to download, but it is not free of interruptions: the app contains advertising. It also sells in-app purchases, and a free trial converts into a paid subscription. If you do not cancel before the trial ends, the subscription rolls over automatically and you are billed at the price of whichever package you selected. That is worth reading twice, because it is the kind of arrangement that catches people out when they download something casually.

The practical requirement is simply a photo to work with. For avatars, that means a selfie; for restoration, a scan or a digital copy of the picture you want to improve. The app works with images you already have on your phone.

The recent update is a maintenance one: performance improvements and bug fixes, with the developer promising faster processing and better clarity across enhancements. There is no new feature attached to it, so if you already had the app, this is housekeeping rather than a reason to come back.

Getting the most from it

The avatars are the easiest place to start, because the result is immediate and the stakes are low. Pick a theme that matches something you would actually use as a profile picture, run one selfie through it and see whether the style suits you before generating a batch. The themed sets vary a lot in tone, from headshots to fantasy characters, so a style that works for a work profile will not be the same one you would use for a holiday post.

For restoration, the sensible approach is to work on copies. Colorizing a black-and-white family photo or repairing a scratched print is a one-way edit in most workflows, and keeping the untouched original means you can compare, redo or abandon the attempt. The built-in before-and-after view is there for exactly that kind of check, and it is worth using on every image rather than trusting the first result.

Upscaling deserves a specific goal. If the point is to print or frame a photo, decide the size you want first and judge the enlarged version against that, rather than against the original on a phone screen. Sharpening and upscaling are the two tools where expectations matter most, because a small, badly degraded source will always have a ceiling.

If you are trying the app under the free trial, decide early whether you want to keep it. The subscription converts automatically when the trial period ends, so the decision is one to make deliberately rather than by forgetting.

A crowded field, and where this fits

Photo enhancement apps are plentiful, and most of them promise the same things: sharper images, restored detail, better color. PhotoBoost's differentiator, as the developer tells it, is the size of the avatar library and the speed of generation. That is a reasonable thing to compete on, since avatar styles are the part of an app like this that people actually notice and share.

Where the app has to earn its place is in consistency. Restoration work is judged on individual results, and a tool that handles a faded print well may still struggle with a heavily scratched one. The advertised three-second turnaround is appealing, but the value of the output matters more than the clock, and that is something only your own photos will tell you.

A capable pick for photo repair and playful portraits

PhotoBoost is worth installing if you have a specific job in mind: a blurry photo you want to salvage, an old print you would like to colorize or enlarge, or a selfie you want turned into something more styled. It handles those tasks in one place, it is free to try, and the scale of its user base suggests the approach works for a lot of people.

The caveats are straightforward. There are ads, there are in-app purchases, and the free trial turns into a paid subscription unless you cancel. If you are comfortable with that structure and you want both repair tools and a wide set of avatar themes in a single app, this is a reasonable choice. If you only need one of those two things, you will be paying for more than you use.

What's new in version 1.99.0

In this version, you’ll find important performance improvements and bug fixes to make your enhancement experience smoother. Enjoy faster processing and improved clarity for all your photo enhancements.