Restoring My Roommate's Old Photos: Black & White and Color Techniques
A Light Touch
A Fun Project
A couple of weeks ago, my roommate Dana asked me to scan a couple of old photographs he found while looking through his old photo album: one was an old black and white photo of his late mother, Patricia; the other was a color photo of Dana in his sailor uniform, taken in 1986.
I knew that Dana would have been satisfied with just the scans, but I decided to do a little restoration work with PhotoShop before I sent him the finished products.
Being a self-taught PhotoShop user, I'm always hesitant when facing the task of working on images of real people. So, after making scans of the photos, I searched for two good tutorials—one for the black and white and the other for the color.
I found a very good tutorial—How to Digitally Restore an Old Photo in Photoshop—to walk me through the steps of restoring an old black and white photograph.
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The first step was to scan the photo at 300dpi. (I also scanned the color photo at 300dpi.)
I loaded the jpg into PhotoShop, copied it to a psd and duplicated the layer. Then I removed some dust and scratches using the dust and scratch filter. (Filter-Noise-Dust & Scratches). Next, I removed some speckles and noise from the photograph (Filter-Noise-Reduce Noise). For the remaining touch ups–fixing specks, repairing lines/creases, I used the spot healing brush.
For one last finishing touch, I adjusted the brightness and contrast, being careful to first create another layer on which to work. You might have noticed that I left the edges of the photo, where creases can be seen, untouched. This is, after all, an old photo. In order to preserve some authenticity, I left some signs of wear evident around the edges.
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One Down, One to Go
Although Dana's old sailor photo is not as old as the black and white photo, it came with its own set of problems. Luckily, I was able to find a good tutorial pretty quickly: How to Restore Old Color Photos : Tips for PhotographersAs with the black and white photo, I loaded the jpg into PhotoShop, copied it to a psd and duplicated the layer. Then I ran my AutoAdjustments action (macro) to do the Auto Color, Auto Tone, and Auto Contrast adjustments.
Next, I duplicated that layer (which I had just altered with Auto Adustments) and added a curves layer. With a general S-curve, I brought up the highlights and deepened the shadows. Then, I added a vibrance layer to make the colors pop. Using the spot healing brush, I cleaned up some small specks and scratches. Lastly, I created a Snapshot of the active layers and copied it to a new psd.
Blending Modes
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I was ready to call it a night and save the new image as a png to be passed to my roommate, but the skin tone just didn't look right. As a last resort, I decided to play around with the Blending Modes. Frankly, I can't remember all the steps I went through, but I finally got a result that gave Dana's face a more natural look.
The next day, Dana posted the finished portraits to his FaceBook profile. He said he got a lot of compliments from his Fb friends.
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BruceWayne Says Hello!
How to Restore Old Color Photos : Tips for Photographers
amazing post, look at the updte of the group : I will resteem to more than 1500 followers for free !
Thanks, I work hard on my posts. I don't want to spam or just produce lazy filler. I find writing about my graphic design work, and my PhotoShop use, helps me hone my skills as a writer and a designer.
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