Alpha Photography Blog

In the ‘old’ days of film photography, photos were printed in monochrome, on paper that didn’t really stand the test of time. These images are still cherished memories, and can be easily improved, while not completely restored to their former ‘glory’.

Here is a relatively quick way to breathe some life back into your historic photos, using Photoshop.

The first thing is to scan in the image - a scanner with decent resolution will impact how effective the restoration process is, but you can still have a go and see how your photo turns out.

Here is an old photo, taken around 1960. There are a few creases around the edges, it’s badly focused and it’s in need of some general “help”.

There are a number of ways to do photo restoration, and to really get into fixing a photo, it can take hours and hours.

Here is a shortcut and what I did to achieve the ‘restored’ photo below:

• The first thing I did was to crop the photo
• Next I applied Levels (Image > Adjustments > Levels) to darken the image - move the dials under the histogram to the left or right until you achieve the result you want.
• Now I increased the Contrast by 5 points (Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast)
• I fixed up the areas on the men’s jackets using the Clone Stamp Tool , and the Patch Tool - hold the Alt key down and click on the image where you want to replicate the result. Then click and drag over the problem areas until they’re fixed (this can take a bit of practice).

In this photo, the background has a few blemishes, and a quick and easy way to get rid of these is to:

• Select the background - I used the Magnetic Lasso Tool , but you can also use the Polygonal Lasso Tool if you want more control over the area you’re selecting. You use this tool by clicking and moving your mouse around the area of the image that you want to change. The tool will follow your lead. Double click when you’re ready. You should now have moving ‘ants’ around the area you want to change.
• Select Filter > Noise > Dust & Scratches
• I had the Radius set at 8, and the Threshold at 0
• Make sure the Preview box is ticked - then you can see what the result will look like.
• Click OK
• Now, before I did anything else - I went to Select > Inverse
• This reverses my original selection (to now include the four men).
• I then sharpened this reversed selection - Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask
• The settings I used were - Amount 74%, Radius 4.5 pixels, Threshold 7 levels

In portrait photos, it’s important that the eyes of the subjects be in focus. Sometimes I do an extra Unsharp Mask just on the eyes. To select just the eyes I use the Elliptical Marquee Tool , then go back into Unsharp Mask and adjust the Amount and Radius until I’m happy with the result.

Well, after all that, here is the result:

Resoration is pretty fiddly, but hopefully the above has made things a little clearer and easier. It’s complicated to explain in writing, so I’ll try and post a video, or audio version of this soon.

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