Knowing When To Start

I´ve often said that an important part of photo restoration is knowing when to stop because if you overwork a photo you can lose as much as you gain. By that I mean you can smooth it out, clean it up and eradicate all its major faults and in the process simply ensure that it takes on a completely artificial character.

With the following photo knowing when to stop was not a major concern. Well, not for many years because it was one of these projects I kept attempting and almost immediately gave up in frustration. I just knew that it wasn´t the right time to start.

 

See what I mean? For many years I just didn´t have the necessary expertise to tackle something so horrendous. For a start that deep diagonal crease was totally intimidating and the longer I looked at it the less confidence I had that I´d ever be able to remove it. I finally put the photo away and forgot about it. In the meantime I had enough old damaged photos to keep me occupied. Just recently I was looking through all my previous restoration work and realised that many of my old family photos had been just as badly treated and yet I´d somehow managed to restore them, if not to perfection at least to a reasonable condition so I dug it out again and had another look at it. First of all I desaturated it. I suppose that wasn´t really necessary but I find it far easier to repair faults in a black and white image. 

 

After that I straightened the edges and then used a combination of the clone tool and the healing brush tool to remove the crease. I know that this sounds easy but, believe me, it wasn´t! It took a lot of trial and error before I was happy with the result.

The next step was to conceal the black edges but that was easily done using the clone tool which I also used on the missing part of the shoe. Next I restored the photo to its original sepia. Well, not quite its original which looked rather too yellow to me. (See Tutorials) I also altered the shadows and the highlights. 

After that I cleaned up that messy looking sock using the clone tool. The photo still looked rather flat so I also deepened the contrast.

In my final version I decided to use a darker brown overlay. I then increased the contrast using Curves which brought out the detail. This also had the effect of increasing the visibility of the scratches. 

 

Did I just say that was my final version? Well, it may be but I couldn´t resist trying out an even darker overlay to give it more depth.

 

As you can see from the above, it took a lot of trial and error to restore this old photo. I´m still not entirely happy with it but at least it looks a lot better than the original. I suppose I could remove those scratches but, as I said before, you have to know not only when it´s time to start but also when to stop!

Defaced

It´s been ages since I tried my hand at photo restoration. In fact the last time was about 18 months ago when I tackled a very badly damaged photo of my mother as a baby. That was one of the most frustrating tasks ever and took me a long time and a lot of trial and error. It´s one thing to remove creases from clothes but quite another to remove them from faces, especially from faces which won´t have their own natural creases for about half a century!

If you´ve never restored a photo there are three pieces of advice I can offer you before you tackle a very badly damaged one. First of all, don´t be too ambitious. Try something easy like a landscape or if it simply must be a person then choose a photo in which the face has been spared the ravages of time. Faces are quite incredibly difficult to restore. Secondly, keep practising until you´ve learned what the various tools can do and you feel comfortable using them. Thirdly, when you feel confident enough to try your hand at a precious old family photo choose one you particularly love. This will give you the impetus and the determination to succeed.

Having said that, the following photo of my grandmother and my aunt is a good example of what not to choose if you´re a complete beginner.

For a start it´s almost monochrome when it really ought to be sepia but that´s fairly easy to alter. Ditto the splotches in the background. It´s the white crease across the eye which makes it so difficult. At least the eyes in the photo of my mother had been spared even if the rest of the face was like a plastic surgeon´s nightmare.

First of all I did the easy bits. I completely removed the border and increased the contrast.

After that I removed most of the blotches from the background, also from the baby´s christening robe and started on the face and hair using a combination of the patch and clone tools. I also used these tools to repair the white strips which were caused by the removal of the uneven border.

Then I lightened the shadows around the hands and the collar of the blouse.

I still wasn´t happy about the work I´d done on the eye so I slightly darkened the inside corner. Then I touched up a few more tiny faults, after which I had to stop before I went too far and destroyed the natural look of the photo. I think knowing when to stop is really important. I tend to get obsessed over little flaws so I have to restrain myself from doing too much. At this point I went off and brewed some strong coffee so that I could look at my final result later with fresh eyes.

Well, not quite my final result. I still had to change it to sepia. For absolute beginners I intend to write a little tutorial sometime on how to do this. It really isn´t difficult though. Basically, if you´ve saved your photo as a jpg. you´ll have to change your background to a layer so that you can add a colour overlay. 

I felt at this point that it was as good as I could get it but, as I´ve said before, I can never leave well alone and I thought it needed just a little more contrast. When I use it in a layout I can decide which version I prefer.

And all it needed now was a border. (I´ve already written an easy tutorial on how to do that but then, all my tutorials are easy. I don´t pretend to be an expert.) I thought that a stark white border wouldn´t be appropriate so I sampled a beige tone from the photo itself for the border.

One down, at least one more to go but I´m saving the worst for last!