Post Processing Restoring Those Old Photos Authored By Jparker

By Author: Luciano Castaneda
Total Articles: 150
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Restoration is a large feature in almost any photographers repertoire. With this tutorial, we're not going to need our DSLR, point and shoot, or maybe a Sony Coolpix camera. So put those batteries on charge (for the Sony, work with an NP-FV30 charger), and start Photoshop. Locate an old photo which is in dire need for fixing, and put it on the scanner, and scan it in. Utilize a high res to achieve this, at least 300dpi. If you're likely to display it on the web, you can lower the resolution, but if you scan at low resolution, you cannot increase it so well.

Think about do with the look is to get your output settings right. By this, I mean finding out tones, curves, contrast and stuff like that. It is suggested doing this now if you're doing so later, any fixes for the image you make may show up more with such tonal changes. You ought to fix this part first, then focus on fixing the rips and tears after. As always, either create a duplicate layer in the original background, or do your adjustments using separate adjustment layers, this way you always have your original to refer to.

The next phase in the process is ...
... to know the large problem aspects of the photo. This could include such things as rips, tears, or even missing elements of the photo. The clone stamp tool is amongst the best tools with this. What you should do is sampling pixels throughout the damaged area after which applying them over the damaged area. This will likely copy said pixels over the area and produce it back. That is not hard, especially over consistent backgrounds, nonetheless it might be tricky over detailed areas such as faces or clothes where the damage has occurred. You may have to use your imagination of these areas.

For small scratches and mud spots, utilize Spot Healing Brush which is within newer versions of Photoshop. In older versions, you can using the clone stamp tool, though the spot healing brush makes this job much simpler and faster. It automatically samples pixels around and applies these to the white area requiring fixing. It's a very welcome addition to the Photoshop tool arsenal.

On using both clone and spot healing tools, you may obviously have to zoom to the areas you might be fixing to make things easier for you.

After you have restored your photo, you may find in necessary to crop it to really tidy up the edges. If your photo has a white border as much older ones do, you can this on after your crop. Click on Edit --> Stroke and put in a border for your image. You are able to alter the color if not set to white, but you'll need to enjoy the border thickness to obtain the right width if required.

Finally, sit back and admire your projects, then check your NP-FV30 charger to ensure your battery has recharged, remove and put inside your camera.

If you find yourself in need of a np-fv30 charger this one is available on Amazon.com and I highly recommend it.