A customer of mine recently sent me this photo.
correct a heavy colour fade
As you can see it is faded heavily in the middle due to sun exposure It’s always sad to see your photos face in this way but all is not lost. The first task was to see if I could recover any colour at the scanning stage. This saves time if you can scan one image correctly for the outer section and one for the inner and combine the two. This did not work that well as the density of the tones were too light to get close to the correct colours. Abandoning that approach I tried adjustments layers, but they reveal no colour left that can be restored in the centre section. The carpet and surrounding background have enough clues to give the colours to paint back into the photo but still, the densities need to be changed. I selected the faded area with the selection tools and adjust the curves so that it resembled the tone of the outer section. To check this was spot on I painted a little of the cushion covers colour, on a separate layer, over the lighter area and adjusting the curves and matched it as close as possible with the darker, outer section. With the burn tool for shadows and then mid tones, i set about burning the bits of background that didn’t quite match perfectly with the surrounding tones. From here on in I used lengthy techniques described in the previous 2 posts for colourising or adding colour to old photos. The final result is below.
Correct heavily faded colour
This took a fair while to complete but the result is more than worth it.! If you wanted to read how to colour old photos and the associated techniques you can in Part 1 and Part 2 of colouring old photos.# Colouring old photos can be done for as little as £25. The more complex they are the more it would cost. A typical example is one or two people on a relatively simple background for £25. The above was £75 If you want to learn some more techniques for removing the colour you can sign up to watch my restoration courses. For these premium courses, there is a small charge otherwise you can browse through the blog and see what you can pick up. If you wanted to check out the prices and how much photo restoration cost the visit the photo restoration prices page.
Hi. I have similar, but portrait, photos (3 pcs) with the same problem as shown in this example, i.e. color faded except for the edge parts which have been hidden behind the frame. Would you kindly consider having a look and evaluate possibilities?
I have photos that I put on a back up drive and when I moved them, it looks like certain pixels overlapped and now the picture is distorted, how can I fix?
Hello. This sounds like a data corruption issue. Possibly if you use a data recover tool such as https://www.image-restore.co.uk/blog/photo-restoration-to-recover-your-lost-digital-files/ it may help. Otherwise email me an example so i can see what the problem is and i may be able to help. Many thanks
Hi Neil, great work on this photo! I’m working on a photo that has the same kind damage except background is more complicated. Would you be able to give me some feedback and advice? Thank you!
HI there
This is silly season for where every waking moment is restoring Christmas orders so not got long to reply. If it gets too bad sometimes you just have to recreate the background such as this https://www.image-restore.co.uk/blog/restoring-a-light-leak-or-fogged-film/ Sorry for the short reply but will be something on the blog that is relevant somewhere. 🙂
Hi my partners father has just passed away and I have a passport photo that’s not very good quality that I would love to have enlarged and framed please could you help.
Thanks
Jayne
Hi there
Many thanks for your contact
Please email a photo of the photo or a scan of the image so a quick
assessment to see if your request is possible
We can then move on from there
You will find my email and contact details in the top right of the website, please do not use the comments fields for further communications
Kind Regards
hi, I have a heavily faded photo of my husband and daughter when she was little, it’s very very faded, can you get it back for me, I’m not bothered about colours I just want to be able to have this photo restored so we can see it.. It will be lovely for my daughter to have it. I
HI there
I sent an email in response. I hope this helps.
Kind Regards, Neil