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.
Photo 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 the 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 shortcutting 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 at 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, let’s 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 per cent 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 overdo it, subtlety is the key here and realism is the most important.
Photo Restoration after
If you don’t have the eye for this sort of thing then you may miss what’s wrong with your restoration. You may never work out no matter how hard you look, why it doesn’t look quite right.
Once again I hope this helps some people slow down and observe, I know Photoshop is a quick fix sometimes but it needs to be used slowly and thoughtfully.
Image-Restore.co.uk Providing photo restorations throughout the uk
Photo restorations in Wales Anglesey Sir Fon Brecknockshire Sir Frycheiniog Caernarfonshire Sir Gaernarfon Carmarthenshire Sir Gaerfyrddin Cardiganshire Ceredigion Denbighshire Sir Ddinbych Flintshire Sir Fflint Glamorgan Morgannwg Merioneth Meirionnydd Monmouthshire Sir Fynwy Montgomeryshire Sir Drefaldwyn Pembrokeshire Sir Benfro Radnorshire Sir Faesyfed