Photo Restoration Blog

Archive for the ‘image restoration’ Category

When carrying out photo restoration and restoring an old photograph quite often pieces of it need to be patched up and healed or cloned. To do this you may just grab the clone brush and clone over, but care and planning with sections can create a neater and more convincing job.

If you need to clone up to an object, its best to select the object first creating a barrier so that no cloning will go beyond that point. The selection should be based on the sharpness of the image. By this I mean how sharp or how much in focus the image is. For example if you blow up an image to 200-300% and see how far the pixels merge or overlap between to objects. It may be in a high resolution image this is only 1 pixel but in a lower resolution or scan of an old photograph with large grain, it may be 3 or 4. It is this “focus” that you image selection should be based on.

By using the focus you can feather your selection and clone up to that point with a realistic edge that suits the image you are working on. Used in conjunction with the “heal” tool this can be a very good method for avoiding the smudge effect you get when healing too close to sections with contrast. If you haven’t come across this before its very annoying and this simple technique avoids all the undo and re-cloning you may have repeated over and over not quite understanding why it does it.

Here is a short video tutorial on this topic.

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In this example I will describe some of the processes involved in restoring a badly damaged photograph which has been torn, creased and stuck with tape. Bits of the photo are missing and will need to be replaced and restored.

The Jigsaw. Firstly I cut out all pieces and pasted onto new canvas and the positioned on separate layers to do the jigsaw. This was to accurately gage where each piece needed to be and be in perfect alignment ready for photo restoration. Once happy that the pieces were in place I merged layers. I quickly blitzed the scratches and flecks with the clone and heal tool.

The Tape marks. I selected with the manual selection tool and a slight feather then leveled to the same tone as the picture. Then I fixed the edges of the tape marks with the heal and clone tool.

The face. I copied and flipped and distorted the left eye to make a right eye, then lightened and dodged and burned in using a small brush the skin tones, finally I used the heal tool to get some texture back on the tone. Same with the head piece and flower on head piece from dress.

The Background. Using a large heal tool I recreated the background where needed. The bottom left was made from a section of the bottom right once I fixed it, (the right hand side) I flipped the right and pasted into the left hand side.

The Table / Chair. Again I copied and flipped the chair and cloth, and extensively rebuilt the cloth and centre piece on the cloth just using the slight suggestion of a leaf pattern. I used the four leaves and cut and pasted and rotated until I had four sides of a leaf design, then cloned into the middle one of the white roses below the chair, I final tidy up by trimming the outside.

These techniques are described assuming you have some knowledge of Photoshop, so sorry its not a basics type explanation. It also assumes you have an eye for realism. Many thanks for reading.

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Photo Restoration. Advanced Techniques – A natural eye and restoring without adding perceived artistic merit.

Sorry about the lengthy title but I could find anything more catchy!

Ok so you can use a computer and you can use Photoshop, and you can have a good go at restoring a photo, but does this mean you are a good photo restorer? Not always.

here are a few fundamentals to photo restoration that must be addressed. Unless you can appreciate perspective, light and shade and or the natural environment and how light may affect one object differently under certain circumstances, then this could make or break a restoration.

Example: An old photo which is wrinkled, torn and damaged in the foreground, it’s a landscape with a building and some people in it, they stand in front of their house.

Photo with permission of owner and is subject to copyright.

When restoring land and rough ground, don’t simply grab the clone tool and heal tools and swipe eagerly over the foreground to repaint the grass or rubble or dirt. This can lead to repeated patterns and evidence of short cutting the restoration. Take your time to analyze the scene. If there are tracks on the road or rough ground made by vehicles or carts, look how the ground may have been disturbed and restore it disturbed. Don’t be tempted to clean up and area and make it all nice and uniform and be artistic, restore it, nature is not uniform especially landscapes.

Also examine where the light is coming from, lets say you’ve fixed you foreground and removed the tears and evened out the ground, but does it look restored, if it does it’s not right. You need to place rocks and grass realistically random, and in the case of the tracks make sure the ground follows a natural path of disturbance. The light of shadow can be added last to give the slow moving shadows and rolling tone of the ground, with the old friend dodge and burn. Make sure you use a large soft brush set to 5-12 percent to darken mid tones and think hard where the ground is lower or higher and apply subtle shadow where needed to bring life back to a flat landscape or foreground. Experiment with darkening the shadows too, but don’t over do it subtlety is the key here and realism is the most important.

If you don’t have the eye for this sort of thing then you may miss what’s wrong with your restoration and may never work out no mater how hard you look why it doesn’t look quite right.

One again I hope this helps some people slow down and observe, I know Photoshop is a quick fix sometime but it needs to be used slowly and thoughtfully.

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