I was recently moving furniture around my apartment and I stumbled upon an old box of photos. So naturally, I grabbed a cup of coffee and started browsing. It was a matter of minutes before nostalgia got the best of me, and the peak of that was when I discovered some old photos from my grandparents' wedding. It was taken just before my grandfather got drafted and had to leave to fight in WWII. The photo is over 70 years old and although it was kept in proper conditions, it was still torn in multiple areas and that just kind of made the whole thing sad.
So the next thing I did was I grabbed my camera and started photographing each of these old pictures. It felt good to preserve the family archive, but even if now had them at a 24 megapixel resolution, the age marks were still there. I started importing the images in Photoshop one by one in attempt to reconstruct them. This is definitely a process that requires a lot of patience, but if you're going to restore a photo of a loved one, it will definitely make everything faster. There's a lot of cloning and healing to do, so prepare yourself for a lot of trial and error. Also, you might want to desaturate the monochrome images completely. It will make them look a lot more natural. After a few days of repairing, I managed to bring the old family photos back to life and even make a few prints using 2015 technology.
(Success Tip: Get paid for photographing people anywhere)
I recommend you do the same with your family's memories, but before you do, check out this tutorial on how to repair old photos by Aaron Nace from Phlearn. I used his tricks and it helped a lot. Good luck!
Learn more about using Photoshop from these recommended books:
- Adobe Photoshop CC Classroom in a Book
- The Adobe CC Book for Digital Photographers
- Adobe Photoshop CS 6 for Photographers: A professional image editor's guide to creative use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC