This project is to be a gift from my customer to her husband for Christmas. She borrowed this photo of his dad, who passed away about 10 years ago, from her sister-in-law, and asked me to remove the background people and make him the focal point of the photo. The original was a bit faded and grainy in focus but by scanning it at a very high resolution, it was possible to do what was necessary.

I used elements from the background to fill in the places where I removed people, and extended building, ground and grass elements. Then I separated him from the background and blurred the background a bit to make it more out of focus, eliminating any signs that changes had taken place. I enlarged and color-adjusted him along the way.

Her response when I sent the final photo? Magic!

The Catalina Islander, a local newspaper in California, hired me to restore and color tint this vintage photo to use for a July 4th edition. A reader had provided the photo, which featured his mother, on the left, as a young woman.

After I got past the initial puzzle of how the drummer was staying upright without a tow rope, in a day and age where Photoshop was non existent, I started by cleaning up some minor degradation and spotting. Then I adjusted the contrast in places that were dark but still needed color, like the flag’s stripes. The client provided some input into the colors to use, and I chose others that seemed appropriate. After a number of revisions, the new version looked like it had been tinted the way it was done by hand in the old days of photography – using Photoshop. This is the final result:

There was a time when if you wanted a color photograph, the photographer would have to hand tint the black and white photo with colored dyes. This was a very detailed, time consuming process but the result is a beautiful “old fashioned” look that I’ve always loved. When I received this cool young photo of my grandmother Rose, a woman who often wore bright pinks and blues, I knew I was going to have to give it a try – only instead of using dye, I’d use Photoshop.

This is the original photo. As you can see, it’s quite nice – very textured from the paper it was printed on, and only a few minor imperfections.

The first thing I did was scan it, and do some clean up, so it would look like this. I also desaturated it (made it all grey) which removed some of the tiny brown spots that were splattered about.

I had the fortune to know my grandmother so I knew she had beautiful blue eyes, light brown hair and a fair, rosy complexion. I started this project trying to approximate those colors myself – but it turned out to be a real roll of the dice, fifty bazillion shades of blue and brown all considered. Then, I had an idea. I could sample colors from an actual photo of her! I had this one, the grandmother I knew growing up.

A few wild and fun hours later – voila – a “hand tinted” old photo of Rose! As with the traditional method, the goal is to get as life like as possible but of course, there is nothing like the real bloom on a Rose’s cheek (hey now, don’t groan!). I found that laying on flat color was relatively easy but for it to look right, quite a bit of fine tuning, detailed painting and color adjustment was needed to give it depth and realism.

Here’s a closer view so you can see the great texture that is in this image.

For a really nice effect on your old black and white family photos, let’s give tinting a whirl!

This customer from Singapore sent me two separate photos and asked if I could merge them together. I used a third photo, provided by them, as the background.

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I also did some retouching on their faces and eyes, and added shadows so they’d seem to be more realistically leaning into each other. This is the final result, the two kids together in one shot.

This customer had a photo taken at a trade show, which they wanted improved a bit before adding it to their web site.

I straightened out the photo, cropped it, sharpened details, adjusted the saturation and contrast and removed shiny reflections from their faces. The words on the banner were no longer relevant so I took them off. The middle set of flyers had a irreparable glare so I duplicated and skewed the set from the left. The white piece of paper in front of his hand had too much reflection to be salvaged, so I removed it, painted in more dark suit, added another set of flyers. Lastly, to balance the entire picture, I moved the pamphlets over into a center arrangement. And now they have a good picture for their web site.

This ongoing client is a professional model who hires me to retouch her photos.

This is a close up of an area of her leg, before and after. I smoothed out the skin, leaving it without any hair bumps but still looking naturally textured.

From the same client, this is a close up of part of the face, before and after. I removed some stray hairs and smoothed out the texture of the skin. I also softened the cheek hollows a bit, and lightly tweaked the color levels.

Whenever I work with a model or other professionals image, the most important thing is that the photos never LOOK like they’ve been retouched! The greatest compliment I can get is repeat business from the same client.

This young mom had a perfect photo for her families holiday greeting card – if only the background of the image were better! So she hired me to remove the background and replace it with something seasonal, and do some photo retouching to make it perfect. All I really had to do was remove some facial glare, brighten everyone up and adjust some clothing colors to work perfectly with the background.

This is the original – a great shot!

And this is the final result, as it will look in the photo frame she was going to use:

The woman in this photo visited the Bacardi Distillery in Puerto Rico and wanted a photo to remember the trip. So she asked me to clean up this photo on the left, remove some people and make a second, closed door. I also lessened a wicked sunburn on her face, brightened up the photo overall and cropped it.