Unusual magazine cover photo restoration. How was it restored?

This magazine cover photo restoration project was emailed to me. It was from a customer of mine and featured her parents in their early 20’s. It was a mock studio magazine cover.

As you can see water had damaged the ink and it needed repair.

Fonts and Faces are the main issues here

To perform the restoration I first need to identify the fonts. This is possible by uploading image snippets of the text to an on-line, image based font search. I found something similar but I could not find anything remotely close to the “&” symbol.

I first replaced the blue background by painting over the blue area with a new blue colour. With the newly identified font, or as best match I could find, I set about recreating the text. Photoshop’s Kerning tools come in very hand for spacing and height for the matching layout.

The “&” symbol was drawn in with Photoshop’s “smoothing” brush strokes. This gives a nice smooth curve when drawing and i was able to recreate the red swirls neatly.

Restoring the face

Repairing the face was tricky. I first set about drawing the replacement eye. I cut out the right eye and flipped it. With the distortion tool in Photoshop I distorted the new eye to look as best I could for the replacement. I then drew over the top of this eye to get as much realism as i could. Once happy with the new face I ran it through some AI for a finishing touch.

This was not a simple restore and required many revisions to get the face exactly right and as the customer remembered it.

In the case of a tricky magazine cover photo restoration, I will always work with you to ensure the end results is what you are happy with. You will know your own family and their faces better than me!

If you need a magazine cover restoration or have document or sketch or poster that is in need of repair do get in touch. Do remember is not the actual physical paper photo i fix, only a digital version of it.