Friday, January 30, 2009

Restoring Your Old Photos with Adobe Photoshop

By David Peters

Memories are precious and photos often hold these remembrances of times past. Since photos often become damaged through the passing of time, photo restoration is often sought as a way to save these memories. Pictures can become blurred; the color may fade and photos may even suffer from scratches and marks. Technology has come a long way, now offering a solution to these problems. Photo restoration is now available to everyone with the goal of saving and restoring their photos with the assistance of Photoshop.

The Elements in Photoshop, which are the Dust and Scratch Filter can eliminate marks and blotches in the photograph. Located on the Menu Bar, find the Dust and Scratches Filter and click on the Filter Tab. A drop down menu will appear listing the elements. Choose the Noise Tab and select Dust and Scratches.

Once Dust and Scratches is selected, a window will pop up holding two control sliders. The first slider is for the Radius and the second is for the Threshold. If the preview box is checked, there will be another window visible. This window will show the main options to be used in treating the picture.

The Radius slider may do away with the scratches through adjustments. Please take note that overdoing this process may result in the edges blurring. Should this happen, adjust the Threshold slider to raise the clarity of details and make the picture crisper with the scratches vanishing. Be careful though not to adjust either slider too far or it may result in blotches on the photo.

Selecting the whole photo will not diffuse these marks when going to remove them. The alternative is to choose only the part where the scratches are to be found. You may use the Lasso to do this.

You can then feather the edges of the chosen area so that the selected area will not be apparent on the picture. You can do this by clicking the Feather option and click the Scratch and Dust Filter again. You can repeat the process of adjusting the Radius and Threshold sliders to get the texture desired and do away with the scratches.

Should there still be noticeable marks in other areas of the photo, repeat all of the steps, choosing one portion of the photo at a time for adjustment. You can crop the image to remove any cracks and torn edges of the picture to complete the process. The canvas feature can be used to evenly crop the photo.

You can insert drama into the picture by adding a drop shadow to it. This will make the picture seem as if it has been lifted off the page. The color may also be removed using the controls Shift+Ctrl+U. You can then add color by adding a small amount of Sepia using the Hue or Saturation tab. The contrast may be balanced using the Levels option.

These are easy steps toward your photo restoration solution. Photoshop offers a user friendly program that packs quite a punch against scratches and marks that could otherwise ruin your treasured keepsakes. Now you have the means to restore these photos for display in albums or picture frames for everyone to enjoy.

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