Photo Restoration Blog

Archive for October, 2009

Thanks to all who attended the Woking Family History Fair Today 31st October 2009, it was good day and everyone enjoyed it. I was located just inside the main door but outside the main hall.

There was a photo dating help centre in the main hall who helped boost the numbers of people coming across my stand to restore old photos, photo post cards, photo printing and photo wallets to keep your old photos safe , many stands for researching your family tree, and of course my photo restoration stand.

Many people attended and there was great atmosphere.

A small but well designed stand before the event started.

A special thanks to the stand to my left who fetched me a cup of tea when things got busy and refreshments were needed.

Thanks again to all who attended!

Hi all

 I will be attending the Woking Family History Fair on the 31st October 2009. It will be held in Woking leisure centre from 10am to 4pm. If you wish to come along I will be just inside the door, look out for the banner. There will be loads of stall holders selling their services, postcards and books, so please arrive early.

 Hopefully I will see some of you there.

Neil

When i get old photos that need to be restored and the photo is tattered and torn, with a stained and faded background, perhaps with cracks and tears, it would be very tempting to replace it.

Short answer don’t!

I get two or three emails a day from wannabe restoration artists who replace backgrounds routinely. Frankly I am not a fan of this practice. Most are done very badly, with the old, ‘render clouds’ filter and then over blurred with no attempt to match the grain.

Take time to repair the scratches, and tears, correct the fading and stains and when your done with the initial clean up you may find it hasn’t improved that much. Try experimenting with the dust and scratches filter to even out the tones in the background. Then when you have found a setting that works, add a layer mask and reveal the restored image through the cleaned background. You may need to match in some grain at this final stage. The background should now look much more convincing than if you simply used a filter to produce some random, over smoothed clouds.