Photo Restoration Blog

Archive for the ‘image restoration’ Category

Restoring any photo should be pleasure not a chore. If a water damaged photo should need restoring, perhaps one recovered from a flood or a rainy camping trip then provided it is dry it can be scanned and restored like any other damaged photo. Of course the extent of damage may mean you have to replace an entire background by using the method of selection I described in the importance of selection . Once you have cut out you subjects you can choose and replace the background. Should the subject not be a person but a landscape then it may be better to approach the restoration from another angle.

See if you can find out when the scene was, what country and what time of year, this may help with the types of trees, flowers and surroundings you may need to research before restoring the flood damage. You may even find a similar scene in a reference book or even live near by where you can glean clues as to what things may have looked like.

If it is an old photo with people in a scene and the water damage means some of the clothes or objects have been distorted or lost altogether within the image then you can again get researching. Perhaps the owner knows what the people were wearing or have another photo that is not damaged you can use for reference. Photos of the period will give you great references to fashion and clothing and what types of hardware was around at the time. You may need to replace a car, rake, wheel barrow or pram, get as inventive as you can.

You may well be up against some really challenging colour bleeds and awkward colour fades, but with the usual patch tool and some selective feathering around the bled colour on a separate layer you should be able to colour correct these fairly easily.

Remember with the power of Photoshop and skill anything is possible. If it looks like too much to take on then let the professionals tackle it for you. Remember no matter how bad it is even if it if is something you wouldn’t normally have taken a second look at dont throw it away it.

Once again good luck and remember, flooded photos are not flushed away memories but repairable ones.

Image-restore.co.uk Quality photo restorations in Hampshire

Photo retouching and Instant makeovers, years taken off, digital plastic surgery, its all possible but just how far do you go?

Facial restorations involving removing wrinkles, reducing pores, retouching eyes, removing blemishes etc. should be done with discretion. Its very tempting to attack the image with gusto sweeping away all evidence of anything natural and end up with a porcelain skin that looks a little too much like a wax work that a persons face.

Start by reducing the shadows, cleaning away any blemishes that would not be natural, perhaps reducing fine lines around the eyes but not completely removing them. Even out the skin tone next with an overlay filter on a separate layer. Perhaps you might use the patch tool if you have some good texture to sample, to smooth out the tones. Brighten up the eyes and remove the shine from the skin. Sometimes you may have to redraw the catch-lights in the eyes but make sure they look natural, not just blobs of white, shape them a little and add some transparency. Reduce pores by either another layer set Gaussian Blur or targeting the larger ones individually, if you have a large tablet you can actually work quite quickly reducing them with a dab of the pen set up correctly, this way no detail is lost on the face at all.

Above all else don’t over do it. In previous posts I have mentioned before, it must look like nothing has changed, nothing at all. If it looks like it has been restored, you haven’t done it well enough. This industry is plentiful with wannabe retouchers, but to stay up the top there must be no evidence of cloning or restoring anywhere. If you keep everything on separate layers you can always change the opacity to vary the intensity of each step to keep a natural look.

Retouching skin on a man

Good luck and take it slow and steady and keep it natural

Neil

Providing quality photo retouching

Photo Restorations are essential

“Oh gee, I guess I’d better get this restored it’s looking tatty” – No, no, no! Photo restorations are way more important than that, they are essential, they may seem trivial at the time, but you are preserving an important part of family history, your family will have to continue on the memory for their family. If left un-restored the negative or print could end up just that, un-restorable and future generations won’t have that vital visual link to their past. So even if it’s a simple retouch and removal of a few scratches, or a touch up of a face or torn up, faded photo that needs a complete cleanse and restore don’t leave it, act now!

The first thing to do is to protect the image with acid free tissue or paper to prevent any further damage by the immediate environment. Place your photos in a good sturdy album and don’t mount them using stamp hinges or tape, you do not want anything stuck to the photos to make it difficult to remove when you want to get them restored. Try using photo corners but try and find paper type if you can. If you have to write something about the photo try and write next to them not on the back.

Then get it restored, but don’t just get one print get two. The reason behind this isn’t always obvious. If you give a copy of your newly restored photo to another family member then it’s more likely you precious memories will survive for generations to come as you are not the sole owner. Far too often all the family’s heirlooms are kept in one place and should the worst happen, such as fire or increasingly these days flood, then all is lost. The sensible choice has to be two copies.

Secondly get a digital copy too. It’s all very well getting the prints done but if you get a CD/DVD with your images on then you can keep a digital archive. Don’t just leave them on a CD though; if you upgrade your PC make sure you copy the CD/DVD to the very latest of backup storage. First it was floppy disk, then CD, then DVD and we are already into Blue-Ray and who knows what’s coming. Just make sure it’s on the latest media, in this fast paced world you never know when your storage will become obsolete.

Finally if you have one why not upload it to an on-line photo-share or online storage space, you can then share it with the world if you want and let you relatives know it’s there. With the massive uptake on creating and investigating family trees and your files on line, well indexed and labeled, will enable others who have family connections to find their relatives too. Who knows maybe they will get the bug and take the plunge to get their old images restored too?

So simply

1. Protect what’s left
2. Get it restored
3. Get Two copies
4. Take a copy to CD Rom
5. Share/store the photos on line

Image-Restore.co.uk – Quality restorations in Surrey and Hampshire