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Project #15 - Repairing Photographs

[Original Image]              

[Completed Image]
   

Somewhere in your home, hidden in a biscuit tin most people have old photographs of family and friends. As with all things, these deteriorate with age. Now, with the age of computers you can repair the photographs yourself, plus you can even take it one step further! Have a look at the tutorial below to see how the above left picture and ended up with the new image on the right.

Ask your grandparents or parents if you can borrow their old photographs - and bring them some happiness by reapiring them and coloring them - remember to be careful though - old photographs can be prone to damage.
  1. Before you begin the tutorial it may be an idea to have one of your own photographs scanned into Photoshop.

  2. The first thing needed to be done before adding color to the photograph is repair the tears and stains.
  3. Create a new layer and select the clone tool with a soft brush. Adjust the opacity of the brush to about 50%.
  4. Activate the Use All Layers option, and carefully clone over the damaged areas, remembering to reset the source frequently to avoid repetitive patterns.

  5. With my image, instead of creating myself more work with the background, I drew a selection around the main subject and created a new layer. A gradient fill (greys) was added and then some noise and blur. This made the background fit in with the photograph. With all repairs done, flatten the image. Now for the color.

  6. Unfortunately, when you are colorising old black & white photographs you have to guess the colors. I was lucky in this case. All I need to do was make sure I got the right colors for the RAF uniform, and work out the skin coloring. Be careful when adding color - if you don't get it right, you may just upset somebody!
  7. There are a couple of ways to add color to black & white images: Variations, Hue & Saturation set to Colourise, the paintbrush set with a lower opacity. In my example I used the Variations command.
  8. First, draw a selection around the main parts of the uniform and then save the selection in case you need it later. From the Image menu select Image... Adjust... Variation. What you should see next is a large dialogue box with various versions of the uniform. Using the colors provided, mix the color until you reach the shade you want.
  9. All you need to do now is repeat the above process of drawing selection masks and using the Variations command. It's really as simple as that.