Beginner Photo Restoration
Photo restoration is definitely a science. A very delicate science. For this tutorial we'll work with the basic Paint Shop Pro photo enhancement tools and a couple of the paint tools to do a beginner, no science involved photo restoration. The photo we are using is from around 1906. Below is a scan of the original image. I tried to keep the scan as close to the original as possible (not making any adjustments with my scanner software).
The first tool I started using was the clone brush to get rid of some of the white spots in the facial area.
The image was so dark, I stopped to lighten it a bit so I could see more detail. That way I wouldn't clone in and to the wrong places.
There are several ways you can lighten an image. For this image I used the photo enhancement tools in Paint Shop Pro. To lighten with the Photo Enhancement tools go to Effects>Enhance Photo>Automatic Contrast Enhancement. The settings I used were:
Bias - Lighter
Strength - Normal
Appearance - Natural
For this photo I did that 3 times. Below is the result.
The image was still too dark so I used the Color filters to adjust it a bit more after cloning some more of the white spots out. Go to Colors>Brightness/Contrast. I applied a Brightness of 38 and a Contrast of 25. Now I can see the details a bit better.
The blur and soften brush are used for the dark grey area to even it out a bit after color adjustments.
Continuing to clone out the white spots below.
After all the white spots were removed I used the Blur and Softness brushes to smooth out the photo a bit.
Using the Ellipse selection tool, I made a selection to just inside the dark gray area. I then went to Selections>Modify>Feather and set the Feather to around 20.
I copied the selection and pasted it as a new image.
I used the Eye dropper tool to select a darker area of gray from the gray circle and created a new layer. Using the Flood Fill tool I filled the new layer and then dragged it below the image layer.
The image still looked a little dark so I again went to Colors>Adjust>Brightness/Contrast and applied it. The resulting image is fairly accurate and much better looking than the original.
The two finished images are below.
Although the results may not be *professional* they are satisfactory for the purpose this image is intended for and didn't cost tons of money for a professional restoration job.
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