I can do some cool tricks in photoshop, but I also admit that there are still lots I haven’t quite figured out. One thing I’m always trying to improve my old photo fixing skills. I had this photo of my husband when he was about three years old. I love this photo because it’s an expression that I see on our little guy. In the father’s day album I made for my husband I wanted to include this picture placed next to a similar one of our little boy. Unfortunately, the photo was really scratched up and dark. Here’s the process that I went through, I think I could do more with the photo as I learn more but I think the new photo is still a big improvement.
First, open your photo in photoshop. I like to save this as a new photo in case I need to go back to the original image. Next I go to the filter menu and I follow these few steps: filter>noise>despeckle then filter>noise>dust and scratches. With the dust and scratches option you have a couple of things you can adjust, with the preview box checked you can see how changing the radius or threshold values affect the photo. Once done you click ok. Then go back to the filter menu: filter>noise>reduce noise. Once you have the photo looking the way you want you can filter>sharpen.
The final step is to lighten up the photo. I’ve found that if I just lighten the photo it just washes out the photo. I found a trick using layers from the Pioneer Woman’s blog. First duplicate the photo twice. You can do this by going to the layer>duplicate or by right mouse clicking on the photo in your layers palette. Repeat the process twice. Starting with the very top photo in the layers palette click on normal and scroll down and select soft light. Repeat this process for the 2nd photo down selecting screen. Once you have these selected it’s time to play with the opacity of the new layers. This is a trial and error process, playing with the opacity until you have the image you want.
Final step to save as a jpg, go file>save as> jpg.
Again, I’m no expert and I still am learning, but I was pretty satisfied with the results.
