How to restore old or damaged photos

The lockdown has given us a big head start on Spring cleaning, being stuck at home with nothing else to do. If you’ve come across a box of old photographs, damaged and collecting dust in the attic, don’t worry, all is not lost yet.

If you want to restore old and damaged photos and transform them into digitally reconstructed images, but not sure where to start, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve got some great tips to restore physical photographs, breathing new life to them in the digital world.

Steps to restore old photographs using Photoshop

Step 1: Scan your old photograph

The first step is to transform your physical photograph into digital form by scanning. Before you scan the photos, make sure that they are free of all dirt and dust to the best of your ability so that this doesn’t reflect on the digital image.

Step 2: Understand the extent of damage

The next step is to assess the amount of work that the image requires. Is it just faded or are the torn bits missing from the picture? Formulate a plan of action and the order of corrections. It’s best to correct the overall image first before you move on to specific areas of damage.

Step 3: Crop the image

Always crop your photograph before you start the repair process so that you don’t have to work with unnecessary elements. Use print resolution so that your image prints in the size you have set.

Step 4: Fix faded colours

Old prints often have faded and worn out colours. To bring back some depth to the image start off with auto-colour, auto-tone and auto-contrast features. If that doesn’t do the trick, you can use the Burn tool to zoom in and burn the darker features to make them stand out.

Step 5: Noise reduction

If your image has a lot of graininess or scratches, the quickest way to correct this is to use the noise reduction tool. It won’t dramatically heal your image but works well on slight imperfections.

Step 6: Repair damages

To zero down on small damages in an image and repair them takes a lot of patience. The best way to rebuild an image and repair its damage is by using a combination of the patch tool, clone stamp and spot healing brush.

Step 7: Review the image and make corrections

The devil is in the details so make sure you zoom in and go over every bit of the image to ensure you haven’t missed any damaged portion. Make sure you zoom in pretty tight as this will help you repair with less noticeable clicks for a clean finish.

Step 8: Print and admire

After all your corrections have been made you can choose to leave the image in digital form, but also print one out to see how the restoration looks in physical form. It can be such a satisfactory process to restore an old photo from physical to physical, and the rest of the family will love it too. Take a moment to pat yourself in the back, for rescuing a dying memory.

Yes, that’s a lot of technical tips to take in but we promise it’s quite easy once you get started. So go ahead and fish out some of those vintage, tattered photos and try your hand at restoring them.

Whether your photos are faded, torn or discoloured, digital tools can help rebuild them to a certain extent. If your old photos are damaged beyond reparation, you might need a professional to take the wheel on this one.

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Restore An Antique Photo With Photoshop

From 1980s family snapshots to 1880s family heirlooms, many of us have old photos in need of repair. Even images with significant creasing, pitting, discoloration and tears can be restored with just a few simple Photoshop tools. You don’t have to be a Photoshop expert to make massive repairs to damaged old photos. You just have to be patient. Here’s how.

Digitizing

If the photo is smaller than an 8.5×11-inch sheet of paper, you can easily scan it on a flatbed scanner. If it’s too brittle for that, however, or too large to fit in the scanner, consider photographing it in order to digitize it. This has not only the benefit of accommodating much larger image sizes, but can be helpful with very delicate prints. That said, there’s nothing better for a curled vintage photo than being neatly pressed to the glass of a flatbed scanner.

To shoot a big print, hang it on the wall or lay it on a copy stand and place two light sources—such as bare-bulb strobes—beyond a 45-degree angle from the camera position and as comfortably far from the print as possible (such as 5 or 10 feet away if there’s sufficient room to do so). This has the dual effect of preventing strange shadows and detail-obliterating reflections, as well as keeping the light even by positioning the lights far from the print. For maximum color accuracy, photograph a neutral gray card or color chart for use in the next stage.

In Lightroom

With the digital image of my antique print in hand, I import it to Lightroom in order to make the initial wholesale adjustments to things such as sharpness, contrast, color and so on. This stage is the perfect time to consider one of the biggest decisions you’ll have when restoring an old photo, which is how to handle the color. The black-and-white image in the example here has a strong brown cast. This sepia tone can be attractive and certainly appropriate for a hundred-year-old image, but I still think it needs some help. Bear in mind that ultimately how you handle the color of the image is entirely up to you. If you want it truly neutral, go for it. (To accomplish this, use the Lightroom Develop module’s eyedropper to click on an area of the image that should be white.) In my case, I just wanted to dial back the heavy age cast, so I used the White Balance slider to dial the color slightly toward neutral without eliminating what I consider to be a pleasant sepia tone.

If this was a 1970s-era color image, however, I might have treated this step differently. For full-color images that have faded or discolored over time, I think gaining color accuracy is very helpful. For this, I find the Auto White Balance feature can definitely get close, as does Photoshop CC’s auto levels (command+shift+L), which can be dialed back with the Fade control by holding command+shift+F. The other issue I like to address in Lightroom pertains to overall sharpness (slightly dialing up Clarity and Detail and dialing down Noise) and contrast. I certainly use the Contrast slider, but I also like to adjust shadows to bring out a bit of shadow detail without eliminating deep black tones and highlights to ensure some bright, almost-white areas of the frame without obliterating highlight detail. In that way, I can improve the overall color, contrast and sharpness of the image before it even gets to Photoshop. Once there, I like to focus solely on repairing damage, so try to get these overall effects taken care of before leaving Lightroom.

In Photoshop

Once my image is open in Photoshop, the real work begins. Mind you, it’s not that this step is difficult or requires extensive knowledge of Photoshop, it’s just that it takes the longest. Set aside at least an hour and likely a couple more in order to repair the damage bit by bit with the Clone Stamp (and a bit of the Spot Healing brush).

A straight-ahead use of the Clone Stamp—where you alt-click to set the point you’d like to copy from before clicking the area you’d like to heal—can largely accomplish most of the repairs seen here. Be sure to use the brush at 100% opacity because I find antique images tend to have lots of texture and patterns in extreme close-up, and this means any lower opacities on clone stamp will create a bit of a blur that will stand out against the general texture of the image. The best way to fight this is with brushes set to 100% opacity and slightly harder brush edges, as well, if necessary.

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The clone stamp is the primary tool I use for repairing damaged photographs. Simply alt-click to set the area to clone from, then click to paint the area you’d like to clone to. Frankly, if you just use the clone stamp and take your time, you’ll do fine. Though if you’re feeling comfortable stepping it up a notch, consider using a high-end portrait retouching technique called Frequency Separation. It takes a bit to set it up the first time, but it can be recorded as a repeatable action making it quick to apply. For more information on Frequency Separation, check out our tip explaining it here:

The reason frequency separation works well for repairing damaged prints is the same reason it works so well on retouching skin—it allows the texture and detail to be separated from the color and tone. That means you can Clone Stamp away rips and folds on the high layer, then change to the low layer to address luminosity and color—all with the Clone Stamp.

Another tool you can add to your repertoire is the Spot Healing brush. Particularly for small wrinkles or spots, a single click with this brush can seem to magically repair issues. I find a Spot Healing brush set to Proximity Match tends to do very well in restoration settings.

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Whether you use these tools alone or along with Frequency Separation, one of the biggest mistakes people make when retouching images like this is they don’t zoom in close enough. There’s no magic formula, but be sure you can see the details large on your screen and easily differentiate between good image-forming detail and damaged elements. This is likely with the view set to at least 100%. If it’s not clear enough, zoom in more.

I take the approach of starting with the largest elements in a quadrant and then moving methodically through the image and repairing what catches my eye. There are so many tiny dust spots and particles, you have to learn what to let go and what to fix. That’s the biggest challenge at this point. I periodically zoom out to see what’s catching my eye at the macro level, and if it’s damage and it grabs my attention, I fix it. If it’s just general foxing or light textural damage, I tend to leave it. In the image here, for instance, there’s some of this texture remaining on the bottom right of the image even in the final version. Eliminating this texture effectively would create too much blur, and that would look more artificial than a little bit of aging texture—particularly if it doesn’t interfere with the most important areas of the frame.

Speaking of which, the bottom line is to spend most of your time repairing faces and other areas that garner the most attention. Pay closer attention when working on faces, in particular, using the same techniques you might use when retouching a portrait you photographed yesterday. For me, this means ensuring no dust or scratches interfere with your subject’s face (or their body/clothing, for that matter) simply by taking a closer view and eliminating a few more of the finer spots and particles.

In the end, you don’t have to make the image perfect—you just need to eliminate the largest of the issues to let the original subject take center stage once again.

How to Restore Old Photos: 2 Easiest Ways for Beginners

Because the previous technology is relatively backward. In the past time, we can only take photos to keep our smiles and memories. But old printed photos have a limited lifespan because the quality of photo paper and ink is much lower than it is today.

The photos may fade, but feeling and memories won't. Restoring old damaged photo with modern technology to bring old photos back to life. It is certainly a good choice but old photo restoration is a challenge.

It costs a lot to give the old photos to a professional photo repair specialist. Luckily, it’s not a must, you can try some tools to fix old photos by yourself. The following are two ways for you to choose from.

How to Restore Old Photos Online for Free?

Fotor’s online photo enhancer helps to enhance old photo instantly. Enhance colors, reduce blur, increase image sharpness, remove haze, and more. Without any skill, everyone can fix old photos online by themselves. Here are the steps of how to restore faded photos with Fotor's photo enhancer.

Open Fotor's photo enhancer with the image you want to edit. Click "1-Tap Enhance" from the left sidebar to enhance your image automatically and without losing quality. You can always additionally refine your image by using Fotor’s built-in editing tools, including brightness, contrast, exposure, highlights, shadows, saturation, sharpness, curves, and more. To compare your edited photo to the original, click the “Compare” button at the bottom of the canvas. If you don’t like the way it looks, you can reset your adjustments and revert to your original image. After you finish editing, save and download your edited image with the desired file type.

Besides, Fotor also provides the best photo restore app for you to bring old photos back to life at anywhere and any time. IOS and Android versions are all available to download for free.

How to Repair Old Photo Resolution with Photoshop?

Photoshop is widely used in various kinds of picture editings. Therefore, It is also suitable for repairing damaged photos. Here's the steps to restore old photographys in PS:

1. Import the original photo into Photoshop.Bring your scanned image into Photoshop. Your image will become your background layer. Lock it without making any adjustments to the layer.

2. Create a new layer. This blank layer is where you make all the adjustments. When you place adjustments on a different layer from the original image, this means that you can make non-destructive edits-they do not change the original image, but just adjust it.

3. Use spot repair brushes to erase creases, repair tears in photos, and even remove defects caused by water damage and mold damage. In the options on the top toolbar, click sample all layers, and then select Content-Aware from the available types. Then, use the speckle repair brush to check the area you want to repair.

4. Use the Clone Stamp tool to smooth details or areas with rich textures. Press and hold Alt (or option on Mac) and click the area you want to sample. When you use this tool, make sure you select the "current layer and the layers below" so that you can work without damage.

5. Use a euro filter to color the photo. If you have a dark brown or black-and-white photo to color, create a new layer that contains all previous layers by clicking Control+Alt+Shift+E (on Windows) or Command+Option+Shift+E (on Mac). Then click filter > Neurofilter > Color. Set the blending mode to color so that you can make non-destructive edits on the new color layer.

6. Export the photos you restored. You can save the image in JPG, TIFF, PNG, or any other image file format of your choice.

There is a video tutorial of how to repair and colorize old photos in Photoshop below. You can also learn from it.

Photoshop may comes to mind at first when thinking of old photo restore software. Photoshop is rich in features, but it’s difficult and costs a lot to learn. Online photo restoration tools may be the better choices for beginner. Next is Fotor's powerful photo enhancer which allows everyone to repair damaged photos online for free.

Conclusion

Give a new life to old photos by restoring them. We shared two ways to restore old photos.You can repair old photos that using photoshop and online tools.

Photoshop is suitable for perfessional restoration of old photos, and Fotor's photo enhancer is suitable for the beginner to get old photo restored in one click. Hope this tutorial can be help when you need to restore old photos.