Old Photo Restoration

[DogHeadGod]

Last night I restored an old creased photograph for a colleague. I thought I'd post here for other people to see.

Using Photoshop Elements 5...

1. Opened the jpeg she provided and saved as .psd so there would be no more degredation while I worked on it.

2. Using the healing brush and alt clicking beside the damage to choose the nearest colour I quickly healed the easy areas such as the pavement, black trousers, sky and the jacket in the man's hand.

3. Healing won't work on the girls leg because there is too much white, so I highlighted a small undamaged area of the leg and copied it to a new layer. I then moved this selected area into the damaged area on the leg and repeated the process a handful of times until the gap had been filled.

4. I then flattened all the layers.

5. Then I the used the smudge tool to shape the replaced area to match the curve in the leg.

6. Next I used the blur tool to smooth out the area and clean up the obvious blockiness of the pasted rectangles.

7. Now using the healing brush I copied the texture of the leg onto the smooth area.

8. Finally I used liquify to finish re-shaping the leg.

9. The left leg (as you look at it) still looked a little unnatural, so I used the burn tool on the knee to add a bit of shadow and make it look more natural.

10. Next I zoomed in close on the man's head and used the healing brush to carefully replace the damaged parts of his hair, ear and skin.

11. Unfortunately the crease damage through his eye meant there was no eye to restore. Rather than try and copy in an eye from somewhere else which would have been really tough to get right I smoothed out the eye area and used the burn tool to mark out a small area. I then increased the brush size and burned in a larger area. This gave the impression of depth and shadow, and caused the initial small area I burned to be even darker making the whole area look like there is an eye there. But if you look really close you will see there isn't.

12. Finally I used the healing brush to repair the patterned jacket, dodging and burning as I went.

I e-mailed the final version back to my colleague and she was delighted with it, so she's happy and so am I

DHG

[zona5101]

Most excellent. I am sure she is amazed at all you were able to accomplish.
Very nicely done sir.

[DogHeadGod]

Originally Posted by zona5101

Most excellent. I am sure she is amazed at all you were able to accomplish.
Very nicely done sir.

Thanks Zona!

[myfotoguy]

You did a fantastic job! You used some tricks I would not have thought of. What a gift for your co-worker. The smile on the man, I assume the father, looking at his child is so priceless.

[luckymama]

you must have lot'sof patience

[blsweeney]

I am amazed, and now I have alot to look forward to. tnx

[daddyoproductions]

I always love doing black and white restorations...so much easier than colour ones. Thanks for some new tips...I've found myself creating the illusion of parts at times too, but the face is the hardest! I prefer the patch tool to the healing brush to start with, but it is often necessary to have lots of tools in your arsenal cause one thing doesn't always work for every photo. Great job!

[DogHeadGod]

Originally Posted by daddyoproductions

I always love doing black and white restorations...so much easier than colour ones. Thanks for some new tips...I've found myself creating the illusion of parts at times too, but the face is the hardest! I prefer the patch tool to the healing brush to start with, but it is often necessary to have lots of tools in your arsenal cause one thing doesn't always work for every photo. Great job!

I've not had to do any colour restorations yet, but it will be an intersting challenge when I do.

The patch tool looks great from the few tutorial videos I have seen about it, but Elements 5 doesn't have it so I need to make do with healing and cloning.

Thanks for the replies everyone!

[jgredline]

Impressive to say the least. Well done!

[Lespaulstandard]

The expression on the girls face is priceless! Nice work with the resto.