Photos, just like memories, can get hazy with time. They don’t lose their importance. However, they get frayed, worn out, and lose colour. Mould, dust, insects, humidity and water – these are the usual culprits. What you see are bits and pieces of moments that you’d captured in a photo, hoping to cherish them forever. But all is not lost.
You can still cherish your precious memories through old photo restoration. There are special tools that let you restore a photo to its original condition. You could even make additional edits to enhance its original look.
There are quite a few techniques involved in the entire process. These include things like colour correction, detail enhancement, and damage repair. Once you complete these, you’ll get a photo that’s as good as a new one. This article will give a few tips to make the process easier and quicker.
Make ample use of contrast
If you’ve ever restored old photos, you will know how important contrast is. It is what gives a picture its sharpness and high definition. For example, when you look at the picture, it should not come across as smudgy.
Try this trick: zoom on it and watch the edges or some minor details in the photo. Are they visible? If there’s a sign or board, can you read its letters?
If you can, the picture is a high-contrast one. You could also check the main subject of the photo and the background. In a quality picture, the subject is never overshadowed by the background. Suppose you’re standing against the backdrop of a cafe. In that case, it’s you that should enjoy the focus at all times.
Change the colour settings
This means making the colours richer and deeper. Old photos generally lose colour quickly. If they don’t, the tone and texture change. Light, temperature, humidity, and other factors cause this. You need to add the richness of the original photo to restore it properly.
Using a Photoshop tool, you can change things like saturation, colour balance, etc. These will give your old photo a new lease of life. Using the photo restoring filter is yet another way to restore the original colour.
Some tools will also let you work on specific areas. For example, suppose you have an old photo of yourself. You can change the colour of the hair, nose, face, or other body parts using this tool.
Working on the damage
A photo also incurs damage over the years. This makes it lose its quality and appearance. This damage usually manifests itself as tears, stains and scratches. These are inevitable (unless you store them in perfect conditions). But no worries! You can use a software to work on those damages.
But how can you do that? Using methods like cloning and patching. These will remove those imperfections and restore your photo to its original glory. Your old picture might even have certain parts missing.
The tools do this through a process called content aware filling. In simple words, it makes a copy of the affected areas. Once it does that, it replaces the damaged part with the new one.
Correcting the lighting
Naturally, an old photo will have bad lighting. Just like colour, the light tends to fade with time. And even if the lighting is fine, you can always enhance it using a Photoshop tool. Correcting the lighting will improve its overall appearance. Even though it will still be an old picture, correcting the brightness will make it as good as new.
The best part is that you don’t have to search for poorly lit parts in the picture. There are tools with advanced qualities that do that for you. Just feed them your picture, and they will make the corrections themselves. Some areas might require more light than others. Using the tool, you can change a specific area without upsetting the entire picture.
Tips for choosing a tool
By now, you must have had some idea about restoring an old photo. The question is, how do you go about finding one that works for you? Here are some things that might help you out.
Colour corrections: The software should be able to identify the shortcomings of the colour and work on them automatically.
Repairing: It should be able to repair the damage in the photo. Look for things like correcting, masking, and creating layers.
Imperfections: The software should let you handle any imperfections. These could be a stain, fudging or scratch. Look for things like healing brushes that let you do that.
Export high-res images: You wouldn’t want a low-resolution image even after restoring it, right? That’s why you should choose a tool that lets you export high-res images as PDFs.
An old photo restorationis not that difficult if you have the correct software. Stains, damages, burns, scratches, it handles these shortcomings well. Just try to remember these points while restoring your photo and finding the software.