restoring old photos in photoshop

This past week my guy and I celebrated our 7 year anniversary. I absolutely love our wedding photos, although they were taken on film. Even though it doesn’t seem too long ago, digital wasn’t that great at the time like it is now. I remember working at a photo lab at the same time I was preparing to get married and someone came in with digital wedding photos. They were horrible, the digital wasn’t near as strong as the film on a camera. It amazes me how quickly time changes things. Anyways, I haven’t been able to find all the film that my photographer friend gave me from our wedding since we’ve moved here. So although this picture is only 7 years old… its one of the few I have printed out right now.

Here is what I did:

The first thing needed is to either scan the picture or take a picture of the picture in good lighting and with a small aperture. I think this was taken in daylight at F16 with a shutter speed of 1/60.The main tools I use in restoring a photograph are:

• The Unsharp Mask. From the top of the toolbar:  Filter — Sharpen — Unsharp Mask. Using a max of 125-140% so that your image isn’t too pixilated.
• The Healing Tool &  Clone Stamp.
  The clone stamp allows you to replicate exact pixels from one part of your image to another. Great for tiny areas (or wrinkles as I posted previously). The Healing tool is great because it will actually take into account all of its surrounds and try to blend in with those colors. Here is an example of some spots that needed healing (there were several blue/bright spots all over the picture). 
• The Blur Tool. After I corrected all the faded spots and discolorations, I used the blur tool to correct the background sharpness & pixilation. The wall & people that aren’t the center focus did not look great that sharp (especially that back wall).

For this particular photo after I made all those corrections I changed the color slightly to give it a sepia tone. To do this go to Image — Color Balance and adjust your colors. I also gave it a vignette (Filter — Distort — Lens Correction). And here’s how it turned out:
Happy Anniversary my Sweet Guy. Loving the past 7 years!

Do you have a favorite old photo? I used to love when I worked at the photolab and people would bring in pictures for restoration. It normally came with a great story.

On a separate note… I’ve update my blog links, kid quotes & book reads finally. I think its been a month. I’m not fully satisfied with the organization of my blog reads. I separated them out, but I’m not sure I like how I did it. Oh well, at least its up right?

Tagged as: DIY, photography, tiny tips