Photo Restoration

Today I'm featuring a very old photo that was scanned in, and I'll show some easy steps I took to restore the image as much as possible...

Just an FYI, the little girl in the picture is either my great-grandmother or my great-great-grandmother (I believe on my father's side of the family). Just so no one will think I'm stealing random images off the Internet!

I first scanned in the picture - the scanner was nothing special, just an all-in-one printer that came with my old computer. (*Note: please click pictures enlarge)

And here is the initial image...

A bit hazy and several small trouble areas, but overall it's really not too bad of a picture.

The first thing I did was adjust the contrast & levels to brighten up the picture a bit...

It's clearer, brighter, and shows a few more details of the picture.

The next step for me was to fix her right hand. See how it's almost totally in the shadows? It almost doesn't look like a hand at all...

This step took quite a bit of time and work, but I was able to use her other hand, duplicate parts of it, transform & move it, and adjust the sizes of the duplicated pieces onto a new layer. I then used a combo of the band aid tool, cloning tool, and eraser to make the entire 'hand' come together and blend it onto the original layer. Which took me to...

This - much better.

But then there were several other little splotches & minor fixes to be made... Like on her boot, her face, dress, and even the back wall - just a few little distractions that I thought the picture could do without.

Voila!

And finally, here are the two images side-by-side:

Before <------ ------> After

A wonderful thing about photo restoration is that you not only have pictures scanned in to keep forever, but the finished product is often something you'll want to have re-printed & placed somewhere special in your home.

Pictures like this can cost tons of money... But for right now, I'm still offering to do them for free! Anyone who has pictures that they would like work done on, I would love to do it for you for free - just as long as I can use the images for my portfolio & show off what I can do. Just e-mail me the image(s) to photoeditmagic@gmail.com

Thanks so much in advance - much love to all & God Bless!