Photo Restoration Blog

Archive for May, 2008

There are many way to change a photo’s tint using photoshop. I have made this short tutorial to show you how to change a photo from black and white to sepia using three different methods, each with similar results but with subtle differences.

We can use this image as a test image.

Method 1. Change your photo to RGB mode . Select from the top menus – image/adjustments/photo-filter.

You will get a colour box pop up. Choose a sepia colour.

Choose a fairly dark one

and then use the slider to increase the density.

Final result.

Method 2 This method using ”colour balance”. From the menus select image/adjustments/colour balance

Change the sliders with the radio button “shadows” selected so that you dial in around 20 red and 20 yellow.

Then do the same with the “midtones” but around 15 red and 15 yellow. You can tweak these setting to your own preferences.

Here is the final result. This method does not alter the whites in the highlights.

Method 3 Using a colour fill layer. Select from the menus, layer/new fill layer/solid colour

Then select “colour” in the blending mode box.

Select a nice sepia colour

and you are done!

I hope this helps everyone and just choose a method which suits you best, if it were my choice I would go with method 2

Repair my photo from Image-Restore.co.uk

I have here an example of a photo restoration, (removing a person) that if not correctly restored a simple brightness adjustment would reveal some very shoddy work indeed, I will explain.

Removing people from a photo

Lets have a look at this photo of some handsome college chaps on a night out with their partners. A request was made to remove the girls from the background which could be easy if it weren’t for the a hand on a shoulder and filling of the huge gap left behind.

There are two ways to go about this, the quick way and the right way. The quick way would be to select the girls with the selection tools and careful selection. Then simply clone over the girls with a large soft clone brush and rebuilding the pink shirt where the hand was.

Here is the image lightened a great deal to show the background detail.

Cloning in this manner creates repeat patterns where the clone brush has just laid down the same texture and detail each time creating an unconvincing background.

The incorrect way to clone

The right way would be to select and clone over but then make sure the background details were consistent with the image by following on the trees and the rocks behind the boys. I would not be able to sleep knowing that an image had been butchered in this manner.

Here is the image with corrected background detail and the top section of shadows lightened.

The correct way to clone

Now you know when your restoration is received and it looks like that “the people have been removed”. Think a bit more about what has gone on to achieve what you asked. I am sure that you will now begin to appreciate just how much is involved when a request is made to “remove those people”.

Image-Restore brings you a photo restoration service throughout the uk