December 12, 2009

Restore Old Photo (Approximately 100 years old)

I was asked to restore this photo which is about 100 years old, and falling apart as well as losing it's pigmentation. I will remove the tears, cracks, lines and stains as much as possible and try to bring some contrast back into the image.

ORIGINAL

EDITED

No exif, this file was scanned using a Kodak 5300 AiO at 300dpi.

1. Duplicate image (CTRL-J).

2. Using Ruler (onToolbar flyout for eyedropper tool - ( I )) straighten image using horizon line.

3. Crop image using Crop Tool (C), leaving room to add border later.

4. Duplicate layer (CTRL-J).

5. Using a combination of Patch Tool (J), Spot Healing Tool (J), and Clone Stamp Tool (S), I work my way around the image getting rid of spots, lines, cracks, tears and wherever possible - stains.

6. Click on "Create new fill or adjustment layer" (bottom of layers palette, split black and white circle icon), choose Hue/Saturation, and slide the Saturation slider all the way to the left to change image to black and white.

7. Click on "Create new fill or adjustment layer" (bottom of layers palette, split black and white circle icon), choose Levels, and slide the arrows in from the right and left until you get a good contrast of black and white.

8. Select the top 3 layers and hold down SHIFT-CTRL-ALT-E to make a composite image at the top of the layer stack.

9. Duplicate this layer (CTRL-J).

10. Go to Filter-Other-High Pass, set radius to about 10. Change layer Blending Mode (top of layers palette where it says "Normal") to Soft Light, then adjust the opacity of the layer to suit.

11. Merge top layer down (CTRL-E).

12. Put a white border on the image by clicking on the "fx" icon (bottom of layers palette), choose "Stroke", change color to White, and Position to Inside, then slide the Size slider to obtain the size of border needed.

13. Save file as a .psd in case you need to work on it again.

14. Flatten image (File->Layer->Flatten Image), and save as .jpg.