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Adobe Photoshop CS 2 Tutorial - Repair Old Photos

photoshoptalent.com — Perhaps one of the most useful uses for photoshop has got to be repairing all those old photos that are slowly rotting up there in your attic. You now have the chance, not just to maintain alive a piece of history (which by itself is important enough), but also to learn more about your old, old folks, and let me tell you, you'll be amazed..

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  • mylkhead, on 10/12/2007, -27/+6good tutorial, but tutorials on retouching photos are so 90's
    • Rice, on 10/12/2007, -5/+19I didn't have Internet access in the 90's...

      Thus, dugg.
  • techpimp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11It's not even photoshop cs2 specific. You can touch up old photos in older versions of photoshop using the same techniques.
    • TheReport, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2Thats like saying recording music isnt even Logic Pro specific and you can record on Logic Express....Duh
    • nandorocker, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2I agree with that, although that's more of a title inaccuracy than content, the tutorial's pretty good (if you're scanning on a PeeCee)
  • fetusface, on 10/12/2007, -10/+11clone tool? blur too? man theres not way I could have figured this out! What other great tips do you carry for us O' great photoshop wizard?
  • Tricky, on 10/12/2007, -10/+26My god those people are ugly. Why bother retouching *that* picture?
    • Livert, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4I think she's hot
    • t0mmmmmmm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yeah, that woman needs some water-turning-into-wine photoshop retouch. Anyone has a link to one of those make-your-grandma-look-like-a-baywatch-model tutorial for the author?
    • farther, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@t0m: Only cut and paste will save the day. Add a bit of clone brushing for the obvious differences between your familiy matron and the hot model, and you're good to go. Or fap.
  • Rio517, on 10/12/2007, -1/+23I'm not really a fan of this tutorial. It's woefully incomplete, with so many missed tricks and tips.

    Channels: One of the best tricks for these types of duotone photos is first take a look at the RGB channels. If and select the one that is the best representation of the photo, you can delete the other two channels and create a much warmer B&W photo. You'd be surprised how much of the damage can also be removed with this technique.

    The tutorial also makes no mention of the best new tool in CS2: the heal tool. (It's similar to the clone tool, but tries to mimic the light tones of the surrounding area). It can be a little tricky near two distict areas meet - e.g. the background with the edge of the man's face. But if you select only the area that you want to work with, the heal tool won't blur the the background and the foreground together. (to create a perfect selection, one could use the pen tool to create a path that will become the desired selection. Once a shape is complete, right click to make a selection from the path.)

    Color Manipulation: Finally, you should almost never adjust levels, saturation, or colors until the very end of the process. Generally, making those adjustments first will cause you to loose valuable picture information that could be used to reconstruct other areas of the photo.
    • Rio517, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Typo: The heal tool was introduced in CS1.
    • whiskerlickins, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Actually, while the healing brush was introduced in CS1, the nifty ::spot:: healing brush was introduced in CS2. :)
    • Rio517, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2Yes. That is why in my reply to myself I wrote "Typo: The heal tool was introduced in CS1."
    • whiskerlickins, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3Oh, I know. I just figured you got it mixed up with the CS2 spot brush.
    • davidod87, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Also, a 600dpi scan would've been better considering for cloning, healing etc.
    • docillenstein, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0and whoever wrote the thing seems like a space cadet. Every step felt like it was followed with a silent OMG.

      "What feels like a 36 minute wait" for the tool to pop out the selections? I'd hate to see them try to sit through an actual 10 minute file save. I'm also not a fan of the 'I can't believe they used white borders' comment. Just sounds too much like a 15 year-old wrote this.
  • iPirate, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Is it just me, or does that guy look like a member of the Bush family?
  • srg13, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4My brother did this a few years ago (not using a tutorial) in Photoshop 7, and he repaired a huge tear out of the corner, and a rip through the center. It looked great. It's not that hard to do...
  • daedal, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Wow guys. I can't believe how pompous some of you are. If the tutorial didn't help you out or you already knew about the tips/techniques then skip it, don't mark or bash it down. If it can help someone, then great. Isn't that the whole point behind tutorials?
    • themayorpwns, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Isn't part of "community voting" trying to weed out the good tutorials (or articles) from the bad? If we all took your advise and "skip it", we would have pages upon pages of mediocre tutorials, with the good ones tucked in there which are hard to find. We are weeding out the poor articles, so what if this is one of them?

      And yes, he missed a great deal of information in the tutorial, I wasn't pleased with it.
    • jdonner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0What can I say, it's a poor tutorial. Don't ask us to say that it's great when it's sooooo very basic. I can understand that we have people who we would call beginners, but that doesn't mean you have to write tutorials that were written as if the target audience was a group of kindergarten children.
  • thirdplanet, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5some ugly grandparents there
  • Rageous, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Really all this did was explain that you can use the clone tool to patch and repair photos. I won't knock the idea since I've done it to fix some horrific photo scans, but it would've been nice to see some elaboration on the technique. I've discovered some interesting methodology along the way, and was hoping to see some insight from someone else. Guess not.
  • spyres, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Let me tell you, I wasn't "amazed".
  • samesong, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Why did he scan the photo in sideways at an angle?
  • Cleanlyness, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1me: "Ok this is lame"

    webtech should get t3h ban
  • MorganPhoenix, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1ahhhh something of professional interest... I'm a graphic artist. It's always good to see a refresher like this.

    Though I must say that 600dpi really is the way to go. 300dpi just doesn't cut it when one wants to enlarge a graphic to 12x18", 18x24", or 24x36". Unless, of course, you're using a vector graphic.

    I never get the time to do stuff like this, though. Nobody wants to pay $100 to get a photo repaired.
  • MorganPhoenix, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0600dpi really is the way to go. 300dpi just doesn't cut it when one wants to enlarge a graphic to 12x18", 18x24", or 24x36". Unless, of course, you're using a vector graphic.

    I never get the time to do stuff like this. Nobody wants to pay $100 to get a photo repaired. I also agree that the only things explained were how to make an arbitrary rotate and the use of the clone feature. tbh I've never used clone... I usually do things by the seat of my pants with pencil and smudge/blur.
  • Tarnum, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Why scan a skewed picture? You lose quality rotating it in Photoshop. Better spend 5 seconds to straighten the pix in the scanner. Use Levels in the scanning software to find the white/black points instead of Auto Levels. Scan in 600 dpi and 16 bit color, not 8 bit. Consider scanning in grayscale.
    You may rotate and crop the picture in one step with the crop tool (Ctrl-T). There is no need of guides as well.

    Not exactly professional tutorial.
  • Tarnum, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Why scan a skewed picture? You lose quality rotating it in Photoshop. Better spend 5 seconds to straighten the pix in the scanner. Use Levels in the scanning software to find the white/black points instead of Auto Levels. Scan in 600 dpi and 16 bit color, not 8 bit. Consider scanning in grayscale.
    You may rotate and crop the picture in one step with the crop tool (Ctrl-T). There is no need of guides as well.

    Not very professional tutorial.
  • kixxster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I like those "awful" white borders. Not the greatest tutorial, but if it helps someone, great.
  • Weakling, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1File --> Automate --> Crop and Straighten Photos is usually my preferred option to at least straighten a photo ... but that was probably too easy for this tutorial ...
  • otaleks, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1NIIIIIICE!!!
    I have a photography class and we use CS2
    and our next project is to restore old photos

    Thx man
  • geed, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Here's one I did a while back.
    [url]http://geedpix.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_geedpix_archive.html[/url]
  • geed, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Here's one I did a while back.
    http://geedpix.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_geedpix_archive.html
  • beavercleaver, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Bury. Lame. This tutorial makes unneccesary aesthetic decisions about the photograph. Better would be just to scan and archive the original scan including the white border. This is just a baby photoshop tutorial.
  • jdonner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Mmm, what a basic tutorial. Beginners retouching.
  • pdang, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Use Levels in the scanning software to find the white/black points instead of Auto Levels.
  • KingLeo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Funny how the tutorial says "Requirements: Photoshop CS2 or higher".... there is no higher PS yet! lol. CS3 is coming out this April though! Exciting times.
  • Kilraq, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1A good basic guide to photo correction of old photos. The nice thing about this guide is it is compatible with older versions of Photoshop. The guides a bit incomplete and could show people other ways of repairing, but for joe smoe whos copy of Photoshop is "borrowed" (Not endorsing do that), then this is a perfect guide for them.
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