Restoring Old family photos (tips please)

[HandMadeGod]

hi everyone, I found these photos last week. One of them is my mothers only childhood photo, and the other one is my grandfather and grandmothers only photo I could find :/ anyway I never tried restoring before maybe someone could point me to a good beginner tutorial. thanks

[lcramer53]

Hello HMG, I only had time to do a very little bit with the one of your parents. Desaturated to B&W. Did a levels and curve adjustment, used the healing patch for some areas that looked like they weren't supposed to be there. Had to stop there.

[DCobb]

Unless the entire background is significant, you might want to consider croping the picture. Filled in the highlight areas on the grass.

-contrast adjust
-clone and healing brush
-3rd party filter to sharpen focus

dc

[omytfineo1]

HandMadeGod - nice name ,

You might want to start here: http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/
a good place to start...

I have bought a book by Katrin Eismann with Wayne Palmer called 'Photoshop Restoration & Retouching, 3rd edition'. A great resource and reference for when I am stuck or stumped on certain old photographs.

Good Luck!

[DCobb]

This is my try on the other picture. On the book by Katrin Eismann, The Third Edition is for Photoshop CS2 and the 2nd Edition is for CS. I don't know what you are using.

-tried to even out the skin on the face
-Used on the K. Eismann's techniques for sharpening. Can't say I am 100% happy with the results.

dc

[Charlene5]

I always start with a general study of a picture and then I correct the color. Your mom was one tough lady and it's still not right I faffed with settings for over an hour and the attached is the best I can manage. I shall sit at the feet of/and look adoringly at the person who can do mom up right.

What do you mean, faffing isn't a verb? It is. It's akin to futzing but it's more aimless It's a regular verb. I faff, you faff, he faffs.

MJ

[Charlene5]

I got so excited over mom that I forgot the other picture. After tweaking the light/dark balance I did some really fast and messy clean up. I ran it through Disk Doctor to trample some of the JPEG garbage and, because the picture is important to you, I hit it with Focus Magic. I do love that plugin. It can find detail when there doesn't seem to be any at all.

I, too, chose to crop. I left the tree because it makes a nice asymmetrical frame for the figures and the way the light is falling leads your eye right to the people.

MJ

[Alison]

Hi HandMade,

I had a go at both of these. Cropped the one of the man and lady. Mainly just fiddled around until both of the images looked reasonably okay.

[LonK]

Regarding the photo of your mom, your first task is to "find the image". This entails extracting as much info as you can from what you have. In this case, you need more substance in the highlighted areas. This can be gotten through the use of curves (or other contrast related tool) -- and it's easiest to do if you first enlarge, desaturate and set initial white, grey and black points. Once you've done that, you can work on the repairs needed. I did a bit here to get it started -- cloning away damage, de-noise brushing, tone airbrushing, Neat Image, graining for body, etc.