This was a small grade school photo of someone’s mom, which they wanted to repair and enlarge. It was one of the worst damaged photos I’ve ever worked on short of actually being torn, because beyond the obvious cracks, the entire surface of the original print was a fine network for cracks. I had the customer scan it at very high resolution so it could be enlarged, which just defined those cracks more.

As you can see if you click to zoom in, the close up of the scan reveals quite a lot of damage. I made sure to tell the customer that it might not be a perfect photo in the end – a lot of cracks were right across her face – but I would do what I could to remove and minimize the appearance of damage.

In the end, the photo really didn’t come out too bad! Sometimes I need to resort to a look that is a little more like a painting than the fine detail of photography, to mask all of the work that has been done, and this is a good example of that. It is something the family can enjoy into the future, though, and that was the goal.

This happy photo of my customer’s grandparents had become mildew damaged, mostly on the right side. I knew I could restore it because much of the damage was on the background and the dress, and it would not be impossible to smooth the rest of it from the grandmother’s face. I zoomed in very close to to work on the areas that needed to have fine detail and allowed the work to be less specific in areas like the background. It was a slow process but I was able to involve the texture of the dress in undamaged areas in replacing areas of cloth which were mildewed.

The end result was new 8×10 prints that I had ordered and sent to my customer to use as gifts. By focusing most of my effort on areas like the face that had to be flawless, and using good data from other areas of the photo to repair the more generic areas like cloth, I was able to restore this photo with only minimal use of Photoshop filters to give it an even grain in the end.

This small photo had faded a great deal and needed to be restored as well as reprinted to new dimensions of 5×7. The first thing that I adjusted was the contrast – and that, of course, brings out all sorts of imperfection details that need to be fixed.

The result is a good example of what one can expect when a photo is as faded, and so much information lost as this one had. I was able to create a good reproductive image of the couple to be reprinted, without all of the cracks, dings and other flaws. The photo can never be as sharp as the original, again, but as long as that is understood, it is a good way to preserve a treasured family photo in digital format and it will print well for reproductions, too.

Sometimes someone will come to me with a photo that they’ve discovered, an unexpected found treasure that offers a glimpse of a long passed relative in an image they did not know they had. And often, that photo has become so worn and faded with time that there is not a lot of information left to restore. But that doesn’t stop me from trying. I just make sure they understand what we’re up against and set their expectations at the right level for the photo I’m working with. This was one such image.

The customer had it scanned herself, since it was the only image she had. I had her scan it at 600 “dots per inch” to assure I had detail to work with, since it was quite small. I certainly had my work cut out for me – more than just the usual aging spots and cracks, this photo also had scotch tape attached to it and hair under the tape. It was going to need a combination of careful filters and adjustments, and manual painting over areas that needed detailed repair.

When an image is this bad, and the color is mostly faded away, it sometimes is easier to remove the color to work and then put it back, or remove it and restore the photo to sepia-tone. I decided to work on this photo in black and white so I could concentrate on the work and tint it later since the color was so faded.

As I tell all my customers with photos like this, I can only restore what is there. If the persons nose is faded to nothingness, and adjusting the image a few different ways doesn’t bring back the detail to work with, the only option is to create a new nose, which requires fine art, not restoring. I also let them know that sometimes when you do apply a lot of adjustments and corrections to a photo, it starts to look less sharp (if it ever was!) and often the best way to resolve that is to create something more akin to a “likeness” of that person, than a realistic image. This is an example of what I mean by that. By the time the restoration was complete, it made more sense to let the texture and fuzziness remain and make it look more like a tinted painting or a colored pencil drawing – not a photo but a good clean representative likeness of the loved one. Sometimes, unfortunately, that is all that can be done. It was certainly a great improvement from the original scrappy little photo!

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.