When starting on a photo repair it’s a good idea to de-saturate or grey-scale the image before starting. If you wish to end up with a sepia tone at the end, then we can apply a photo filter to colourise the image when we have finished.
Let’s look at what we have to do. Invent a window and rebuild the boards and sky.
Repair a missing chunk
Using the vanishing point filter, draw a grid that matches the perspective of the boards and house, notice in the original the boards converge to the left, so the grid must follow these converging lines.
Repair a missing piece of a photo
Get familiar with the tools on the palette, we will be using the clone tone with heal off. Start with the window. Using the clone tool clone the vertical sides of the window frame upwards. Until you reach what would be a good height for a sash window.
Using the vanishing point
Cloning inside the vanishing point work area
Swap back to normal photoshop window. Repair the right-hand corner of the lower section. Using the selection tool make a selection around the corner section of the lower pane, top left corner. Feather the selection by 1.5 pixels and then cut and paste. Flip horizontally and rotate slightly to become the mended corner.
Cloning inside the vanishing point work area
Now we have a full lower pane we can use for the top half. Select just the pane from the newly complete lower window with the selection tool. Feather again, cut and paste. Position the new upper pane in place where it looks most natural. Now dirty the pane slightly by dodging back the highlights with a soft large brush. Now we need to add to and correct the top of the window. Select the window sill minus the shadow under it, feather and cut/paste. Re-scale the sill to make a wooden beam for the top part of the window frame and position.
Fixing the window
Now it’s down to you to add texture by using either the clone tool set to a low opacity and a small brush or the patch tool to grab some grain and texture from suitable wooden areas around to make the new woodwork like it’s always been there. Assess the shadows under ledges to make sure they are all consistent with the look of the image and strength of the sun.
Swap back to vanishing point filter. Let’s fix the boards. In the original photo the boards to the right are significantly lighter than those to left, so when we clone them over we would have a house that looks spookily similar on both sides and not natural enough.
Fixing the boards
So although cloning them across is a good starting point using vanish point still, it might be better to use what we have on the right and clone the up and then borrow the texture and dark markings of those on the left to blend them in a bit. To blend over the texture from the right-hand boards use a clone tool set to medium soft and around 50-70% opacity, vary this if the results do not look convincing. You can use the same method to make sure the shadows between the boards look natural.
Final image restored
Finally for a convincing photo repair, when you have done with the boards just clone up the sky, select the bottom edge border of the photo and use it to make one at the top. Flatten the image and rotate and correct the perspective.
Another fine digital restoration example brought to you from image-restore
Done.
Neil
Providing a Quality photo restoration service
Hi Neil
I have a photo which was in a plastic wallet in an album, which has become damaged due to water getting into the album and seeping into the wallet.
I realise now I did the unforgiveable and peeled the photo from the wallet and thus removing a big chunk of my face from this 28 year old photo of me with my new-born son.
Can you restore bits of people’s faces? Lol! And what would be the cost approximately?
It’s a small 6 x 4 inch snapshot.
Many thanks.
Carolina
Hi there, i have sent you a private email. Kind Regards