Photographs transform into memory souvenirs. Photos are memories made factual, relations to ancestors unknown, and loved ones long gone. Photo restoration services are the perfect way to get your memorable photographs restored.
Here are a few methods on how to restore damaged photos by scanning and repairing damaged and faded precious photographs.
- Begin with a best quality digital scanner
The procedure of restoring old photos starts up with a good scan made with a dependable scanner. It’s not a quick process particularly if you have several prints to scan, but it’s essential not to cut corners on quality, as the scan lays the basis for the rest of the technique.
A color scan may be best, even for black-and-white images, because the color data can sometimes be useful for accurately restoring toned black-and-white prints. If your scanner offers an automatic color adjustment or restoration feature, give it a go.
- Restructuring visual
The best way to repair the damage of photographs is to open the image in Photoshop and zoom in close. Then, take your time using tools such as the clone stamp, spot healing brush, patch tool, and content-aware fill to eliminate wrinkles, spots, and rips.
This is the most boring, time-consuming portion of the process, but it’s also the one that can make a ruined old print look new.
- Covering the patches in photographs
If your photograph is unfortunately worsened by a large gap or hope you’ll have to perform some reconstructive methods. The larger the void and the more detail surrounding it and the trickier the reconstruction will be. You can fall back on cropping as a crutch to minimize the opening depending on its location.
But if you’re fortunate, the lost area will be in the background or pieces of clothing that is slightly manageably repairable. To restore the void in the corner, start by selecting an appropriate area nearby, then copying and pasting it over the void.
- Adjusting color
While very old black-and-white photos are more vulnerable to damage than fading, color photos generally need a different type of restoration. Even when stored in favorable conditions, the organic dyes in color prints solely break down over time and cause color shifts.
Not only are the colors naturally as vibrant as they once were, but also color shifts to magenta, blue or other colors occur. And while working with color repairs can sometimes be hindered, it can also be one of the easiest fixes. Photoshop’s automatic contrast and color controls can go an extended way to making faded color photos look great.
- Final touch-ups of photo restoration
The image should now look all but excellent. For the finishing touches, examine adjusting the contrast with a curves adjustment layer, whether you’re working with a color or black-and-white image. Then, click on the darkest area in the scene to tell Photoshop this tone should be black.
Then, choose the white point eyedropper and click the lightest portion of the scene to set the white point. This will also help abolish some color cast well, and if these adjustments appear too heavy-handed, simply dial back the layer’s opacity in the Layers palette.
Too much sharpening will amplify grain and other issues in the print, so it’s reasonable to keep it subtle and isolate the sharpening to only the most necessary places. If the image needs sharpening, try a high pass layer. Try it out yourself and get that precious photographs restored.