June 28, 2014

CATURDAY ART

Something challenging and fun with Photoshop is old photograph repair and restoration.  Many of us have old family photos that are often damaged or faded.  With photoshop, they can be enhanced and given "new life" and made ready to frame and display.  The photo below had been pasted into an album and was cracked in places, had spots and fading, and one corner torn off when removed from the album.  First it was scanned.  Second, the spots and cracks and faded spots were corrected using the "clone" tool.  The missing corner was replaced with cloning.  Rather than tint the photo to make it a sepia print; I chose to color tint, as if it were "painted", adding slight green into the trees, and pinks and blues to the hair ribbons.  The overall image was first sharpened and brightened slightly; then slightly blurred to soften skin tones.  The final image was printed on matte-finish photo paper, as glossy paper would not have been available at the time.  Find an antique style frame in a thrift store, use non-glare glass and you're done!  Do this with several old photos and you have a gallery montage of wonderful old family photos to display in your home.

 Image, circa 1920.  Left to right: my aunt, my uncle, my mom.

CATURDAY ART
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10 comments:

  1. I may have to learn photo shop just so I could do that with all my old photos. That is terrific and a nice lesson. Ann, you have a terrific day.

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  2. That looks really great!

    Purrs xx
    Athena and Marie

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  3. How awesome! We recently lost a lot of family photos that were never digitized, and we think that digital restoration is so important!

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  4. Whoa! That’s cool! The stores charge a fortune to restore old photos.

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  5. You did an amazing job with that old photo. What terrific memories it must evoke if any of the three are still alive. My favorite thing growing up was looking at the old photos in my grandmother's albums. XO, Lily Olivia, Mauricio, Misty May, Giulietta, Fiona, Astrid, Lisbeth and Cslista Jo

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  6. You did an absolutely beautiful job!

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  7. Wow, we had no idea you could do THAT even with Photoshop! We have a lot of old photos that need help and may try that.

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  8. Wow Ann, what a gorgeous photo, beautiful job you did.

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  9. Beautiful job! And a totally sweet photo!

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