Opening an old family album, we plunge into the past for a moment, sometimes so far away that it’s hard to remember, and only old faded and pretty tattered photos remind of events that once took place, about people who once crossed paths, about a long gone into the nothingness of time. And sometimes we do not fall into our past at all, but into the past of grandparents, and you can only imagine them young judging by the photograph.
Retouching, restoration, restoration of old photos is a way to return photos to their original appearance. This is especially valuable for photographs from the times of the Great Patriotic War, which have great historical value both for posterity and for history in the very state in which they are located. It is highly recommended not to modify such photographs, give them color, or add any objects. But sometimes such photos are so damaged that it is difficult to make out what and who is depicted on them, of course, various programs come to the rescue here - inventions of the modern world. One of these programs is Photoshop, a program that includes a huge set of tools. She is able to solve the most complex retouching tasks.
Restoration of an old photo - breathe a second life into a photo
When restoring old photos, the main thing is to preserve its uniqueness, while removing all the flaws that have appeared over time: various scuffs, creases, cracks, specks of dust and damaged areas. Each Photoshop master probably works more intuitively, like an artist, manually painting lost fragments, fixing defects, and is guided exclusively by his vision for each particular photo, which it should become after processing. Restoring old photos in Photoshop does not have any clear step-by-step instructions, since all photos are different, the damage to them is very diverse. But there are some of the most commonly used tricks and tools that are worth talking about.
Restore an old photo
We will consider the restoration of an old photograph using the example of this photograph, we will try to restore its original form, the photograph has quite a lot of distinct cracks and creases, this is a scan, and we will work with it.
- Upload it to “Photoshop” - “File” / “Open”.
- Our photo of the girl is uploaded to the Photoshop workspace.
- First you need to remove the white edges of the photo, for this we use the “Crop” tool. This tool is located on the toolbar on the left side of the workspace (by default). We click on the tool, an area for editing has appeared around our photo, we hover over this area with the mouse, up and down arrows are displayed, pulling by which we can hide the edges of the photo, areas with obvious defects. After we have fully fitted our photo, just press the Enter key.
When the restoration of an old photograph is carried out, with prolonged processing of one photo, the eye gets used to it, then you can just ruin the image. So that at any moment you can see the original and compare it with the working layer, you should duplicate the layer at each stage to compare the final image with the original.
Removing defects photo - “Spot repair brush”
- Duplicate our photo - Ctrl + J key combination.
- After cropping, we still have parts of the photo with defects in the corners, they can be corrected with the “Spot Repair Brush” tool, since in most cases the background is plain in the damaged areas , this will not be difficult. We set the size of the brush depending on the size of the damage and just paint over the area, slightly, as if crawling to the edge of the background. In this case, after processing, if the background is uniform, the brush will replace the torn-off corner of the photo with a similar tone and texture with the neighboring area. Step by step, you should paint over all the small defects in the photo with the “Spot Repair Brush”.
Correction of temporary losses - "Patch"
- Another tool is Patch, which copes with tasks such as restoring and restoring old photos. We select the tool and circle the problem area, trying to capture only the defect. To form an area for the patch, you need to close the circle. Then grab the selected area and drag it to the area next to it, try to avoid excessive contrast, choosing the area for the patch.
- After processing with these tools, this is what we got.
When working with portions of the central object in the photo, you should be extremely careful, since the “Spot Healing Brush” tool creates the “blurring” effect. In order not to lose the texture and detail of the image, you need to make the brush size a little larger than the size of the defect and not overdo it.
Stamp tool during restoration of old photos
Another great tool that Photoshop masters often use is the Stamp tool. Its principle is based on the transfer of color and texture to the damaged area from the area specified manually. Thus, with a correctly configured tool (the settings are individual for each photo) - brush size, opacity, pressure - the texture transferred next to the damage is transferred to the damaged area, which allows you to restore old photos with enough quality and restore them to their original appearance. The program for the restoration of old photos "Photoshop" has a huge number of tools and settings, as well as extensions in the form of embedded plug-ins for a wide variety of purposes.
Levels - add depth to the photo
In addition to scuffs, cracks and tears over the years, the photo fades, so at least one correction is worth it.
- Create an empty layer Ctrl N.
- Choose “Image” / “Correction” / “Levels”.
- On the histogram we move the sliders so that we exclude from the photo areas where there are no pixels — move the right one to the left, left to the right, the middle slider slightly to the left, but here you need to look at the lightening effect. When processing photos, you should be guided not so much by step-by-step instructions as by your vision of a particular photo and a sense of the golden mean.
In principle, the restoration of the old photograph from cracks, temporary creases and tears is completed, for slightly damaged photographs of these tools will be more than enough. We have corrected most of the shortcomings, and you can leave the photo in this state, or you can still adjust the tone and saturation, remove the noise, make the photo more vivid and interesting. It all depends on your imagination.