How to restore a face from an old photo. Photo retouching: saving old photos

Real estate 14.05.2020

Real estate

Found an old photo in the bins? Unfortunately, paper is not the most reliable medium, and the discovered photograph, almost a hundred years old, is unlikely to boast of gloss and clarity of the image. Don’t rush to mourn a damaged photo or spend money on a professional restorer, you can restore it yourself! A convenient program for photo restoration, PhotoMASTER, will come to the rescue. Read how to restore an old photograph to its original appearance and preserve family history.

PhotoMASTER will help restore even badly damaged photos

Restoring photos in the PhotoMASTER editor

To protect a valuable family heirloom from further destruction and return it to its original appearance, you need to convert a paper photograph into a digital format. The easiest way to do this is with a regular camera or smartphone. However, this method has disadvantages:

third-party light sources may leave reflections on the picture,
the photo may turn out blurry and unclear,
Uneven camera position distorts the image.

Ideally, it is better to scan the photo, as this will preserve the original colors and avoid glare.

Now that you have a digital copy, you need to download a program for restoring old photographs from our website. Install it on your computer and run it. Open the scanned image in PhotoMASTER and let's get started.

Restoration step by step

Cutting off the damaged edge

If the edges of the photo are very frayed, which is very likely after so much time, it is better to get rid of them immediately without regret. Go to the “Composition” section and select “Cropping”. PhotoMASTER offers several cropping options: free frame proportions, maintaining the original proportions, as well as a number of standard aspect ratios: for a VKontakte post, for iPhone and iPad, size 4:3 and others. Choose a grid type that will help you frame the image correctly.

Trim the frayed edges and yellowed frame

Now frame the part of the photo that you want to leave. The main thing is not to get too carried away so as not to spoil the composition. In cases where the defects at the edges are too deep, for example, the picture is torn to the middle, it is better to partially correct the problem areas with retouching.

We remove defects

You should be patient, as this part of the processing is the most labor-intensive. However, restoring photographs in Photoshop and other editors takes no less time. At the same time, it is much easier to master PhotoMASTER, and it also has convenient tools for quickly removing defects in photos.

Go to the "Retouching" section. Here you will find a whole set of tools that will help you disguise torn corners, eliminate traces of bends, hide stains that have appeared over time and similar problems.

The main work tool will be healing brush. It will cope perfectly with both pinpoint defects and large damage. Adjust the brush size according to the area of the problem area. If you need to remove a stain from a photo, click the brush exactly in the middle and the defect will disappear. If you need to remove a scratch, carefully brush along it.

Removing a scratch from a photo

In a similar way, you will have to completely retouch the photo. Be patient and you will be rewarded with amazing results! If the brush categorically does not “take” some defects, leave them for processing with the next tool, which we will discuss later.

Photo before and after using a healing brush

Another very useful feature – stamp. It will allow you to quickly and effectively remove unwanted objects from the frame. For example, a red spot in the background can be easily eliminated. Mark the area you want to hide, and then select the place from which you will take the donor background.

Removing scratches with the Stamp tool

A convenient tool will allow you to remove the glare that appeared during the process of converting a photo into digital form, lighten dark areas, increase sharpness or blur some fragments of the image. "Corrector". Highlight required area and adjust color, toning, and sharpness settings.

The corrector can be very useful if in some place you were unable to carefully use the healing brush and noticeable unevenness appeared. Select this bad fragment and increase the blur value a little. The defect will not be so noticeable.

Slight blurring of a section of curtains after removing a large scratch

When restoring portraits, the option will allow a little more "Perfect Portrait". With its help, you can automatically make your skin smoother, your eyes more expressive, and your face brighter.

The “Face Lightening” style will smooth out remaining imperfections and make your skin tone more attractive.

Improving the clarity of a photo

Over time, any paper photographs fade, and the technology of the beginning of the last century did not provide the high level of detail that modern DSLR cameras. And yet you can make the photo a little more expressive! In the "Enhancements" section there is a "Sharpness" tab, go there and increase the value of the parameter to desired value. You will notice that the image has become more expressive.

Increase sharpness to make the photo clearer and more expressive

Bringing back “antiqueness”

If it seems to you that during the processing process the photo has lost its unique retro flair, this can be corrected. Go to the "Effects" category. Here you will find vintage filters. With their help, you can restore the touch of antiquity and the former charm of photographs from the past.

The “Retro-2” effect will color the photo in a pleasant sepia

See how photo restoration is done in the program: before and after.

Are you satisfied with the result? Then save the resulting image to your computer. You can print it on paper to replace the damaged old one or publish it on social networks.

The memory is with you forever

Now not a single precious photograph that has come down to you from the last century will be lost. Young great-grandparents will smile from family album, and time will no longer make their faces dim. Entrust the restoration of old photos to the PhotoMASTER editor!

Old photographs help us travel back to a time when there were no DSLRs or wide-angle lenses, people were kinder, and the era was more romantic.

Such photographs most often have low contrast and faded colors, and often, if handled carelessly, creases and other defects appear in the photo.

When restoring an old photograph, we face several tasks. The first is to get rid of defects. The second is to increase contrast. The third is to enhance the clarity of details.

Source material for this lesson:

As you can see, all possible flaws are present in the picture.

In order to better see them all, you need to desaturate the photo by pressing the key combination CTRL+SHIFT+U.

We will eliminate defects with two tools.

For small areas we will use "Healing brush", and we will retouch the large ones "Patch".

Choosing a tool "Healing Brush" and holding down the key ALT click on the area next to the defect that has a similar shade (in in this case brightness), and then transfer the resulting sample to the defect and click again. This way we eliminate all minor defects in the image.

The work is quite painstaking, so be patient.

The patch works as follows: circle the problem area with the cursor and drag the selection to an area where there are no defects.

We use a patch to remove defects from the background.

As you can see, there is still quite a lot of noise and dirt left in the photo.

Create a copy of the top layer and go to the menu “Filter – Blur – Surface Blur”.

We configure the filter approximately as in the screenshot. It is important to eliminate noise on the face and shirt.

Then we press ALT and click on the mask icon in the layers palette.

With this brush we carefully go over the face and collar of the hero’s shirt.

If you need to eliminate minor defects in the background, then best solution it will be completely replaced.

Create a fingerprint of layers ( CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+E) and create a copy of the resulting layer.

Select the background with any tool (Pen, Lasso). For a better understanding of how to select and cut out an object, be sure to. The information contained in it will allow you to easily separate the hero from the background, and I will not delay the lesson.

So, let's select the background.

Then click SHIFT+F5 and choose a color.

Click everywhere OK and deselect ( CTRL+D).

Increasing the contrast and clarity of the image

To increase the contrast, use an adjustment layer "Levels".

In the layer settings window, drag the outer sliders towards the middle, achieving the desired effect. You can also play with the middle slider.

We will increase the clarity of the image using a filter "Colour contrast".

Again we create a fingerprint of all layers, create a copy of this layer and apply a filter. We configure it so that the main details appear and click OK.

Change the blending mode to "Overlap", then create a black mask for this layer (see above), take the same brush and go over key areas of the image.

All that remains is to crop and tint the photo.

Choosing a tool "Frame" and cut off unnecessary parts. When finished, click OK.

Today we will look at one of the most interesting topics in photo processing with Photoshop - photo retouching. Retouching in general is very exciting activity. It’s damn interesting and pleasant when a seemingly completely worthless, spoiled photograph turns out to be something real and tangible, when a past era, people and destinies are revealed.

Just recently one of my friends asked me to restore an old one he had found. family photo almost a hundred years ago. Her condition, you understand, was very far from perfect. Once again we have to be convinced of the advantage of digital over film, at least in terms of the safety of photographic materials...

So let's start p photo retouching. The first thing we need to do is scan our “old lady”. As a rule, almost all old photographs have “scars” on their body - fractures, missing fragments (for example, lost corners when torn out of albums), simply fading and much more. This work had all of the above “advantages”. The photo was scanned at 600 dpi. In principle, for such work when printing, 300 dpi is quite enough, but for retouching it is desirable to have a higher resolution to reduce distortion. The output file is TIFF format and highly preferably 12 or 16 bit. The contrast during scanning needs to be reduced, then, during photo processing, we will restore it. It is advisable to scan in RGB mode, even if the photo is black and white. Then select from the three channels the one with the least damage, removing the rest. As a general rule, the noisiest channel is usually blue. This way we get the original monochrome image. Since the file size of a monochrome photo is significantly smaller, this significantly speeds up its processing. I highlight two methods for approaching retouching complex photographs.

We perform the simplest operations first, gradually moving on to the most problematic areas. At the same time (especially if you do this rarely, from time to time), you get better at simple operations, approaching complex areas with extensive experience. And as simple retouching progresses, the photograph begins to improve before our eyes, which greatly inspires further work. Or we start with the most difficult one (more suitable for very experienced users), leaving the little things “for later.”

Let's focus on the first option p photo retouching. Let's try to compose for ourselves some rough plan retouching work, so as not to run around the photo from corner to corner looking for defects. Since there is nowhere to frame our work further, it is necessary to restore the edges of our canvas, eliminate creases and large scratches, try to restore the “severed” leg of a man, retouch the woman’s face (the most difficult thing), clean up the remaining small items, general exposure correction and final toning are also necessary.

Of course, to restore the edges of the canvas, you can use different photo processing methods. In this case I did the following. As you remember, we scanned the photo with very low contrast, now this will be very useful. The inner cover of the scanner usually has a black backing. If this is not the case, then cover the photo with a black sheet of paper and, if possible, press it more tightly against the glass to smooth out the creases.
Now the black level of your work when scanning will correspond exactly to the scanner substrate, as can be seen in the photo above. Make a copy of the layer (Ctrl+J), then right-click (pen) select Color Range (color range) and select our black outline where there was no photo. At the same time, use the Fuzziness slider to determine the selection range. Then, selecting a drawing tool, for example a brush, using the B key, pressing the Alt key, use an eyedropper to select the tone of the drawing tool in the picture itself. First, select a tone in the floor area (lighter) and paint it over the selected black area opposite the floor. Then select a medium tone for the rest of the edge (darker) and paint over the rest of the selected black area. Why is such complexity needed - for the correct operation of our miracle tool Patch (patch).

Select a tool with the J key. This function contains three tools: Patch, Healing Brush and Replace Color, which can be switched with the Shift+J keys. What's so good about this photo editing tool? It allows you to replace the texture of a selected area while maintaining its brightness and color components. I will show this using the example of an enlarged fragment of the floor near a woman’s leg.
Let us select with a pen the area that we are going to “treat”; this will be the edge of the photograph, which we have painted over with a tone taken as a sample from the border area of the picture. The main thing is to take your time, following the rule - less is more. Since we need to restore the texture of the floor, we move the selected area with a pen to the area from which we will take a sample of the texture, observing the alignment of the sample in relation to the selected area (in this case, along the gap between the boards). After alignment, raise the pen (release the left mouse button). The result is amazing - no traces of stitching of fragments. We process the entire area in a similar way. It should be added that the tool has several operating modes. Source (source) - in this mode we select the area that we are treating. Destination (target) - in this mode we select the area to be treated (texture sample). When the Transparency checkbox is selected, the texture sample affects the transparency of the replaced fragment (used quite rarely). I consider the Source mode to be the most optimal and convenient.

The photo processing result shown below was obtained in eight steps. If we had not aligned our missing edge of the photo with previous operations of highlighting and shading in tone with the photo itself, then the brightness of the replaced fragment would change from basic to black. That is, our photo would have a blurry black border, which is unacceptable. The more accurately you match the tone on the missing edges, the better the end result will be. To return to some of the “fateful” stages of retouching, I strongly recommend creating a Snapshot of these stages. After this, you can safely clear the History palette to release random access memory, if you don't have enough.

We work in a similar way with the entire edge. The work is painstaking, but the result is worth it! Creases and large scratches can be removed in the same way, using the Patch and Stamp tool. Small dots and scratches can be removed more easily and quickly using the Healing Brush tool. The operation of the tool is absolutely similar to the previous one and is very similar to the operation of the Stamp tool, which is familiar to you. The only difference is that the Healing Brush takes only the texture from the sample, and the brightness and color from the “repaired” area. Some features of its use should be taken into account. The Patch and Healing Brush tools have some blurring of the boundaries relative to the selection outline, so they cannot be used at the boundaries of sharp brightness transitions - the result of processing the photo will not be very successful.
Thus, attempts to remove lesions near a woman’s head “on the forehead” using Patch lead to blurring of the boundaries and disruption of the uniformity of tone of the replaced fragment. To prevent similar results when processing photographs in problem areas of sharp tonal transitions, you can first use the Stamp tool with adjustable edge hardness (for more precise overlay). It is used to separate (expand) transition boundaries if the fragment being replaced is large enough. If the fragment is small, then you can simply paint over it with the Stamp tool, and then apply Patch to the same place for alignment.

As you can see, the result is p photo retouching completely different. If you clearly understand the operating principle of these tools, then success is guaranteed!
The next stage of photo processing is to “make” the man’s missing leg (oh, if only it were possible in real life...). Before this important operation, you need to straighten the background in place of the missing leg, then it will be more difficult to do. We also do this with the Patch tool. Now we select his right leg almost to the knee (slightly higher than the missing part and with an allowance around the perimeter). Next, execute the Feather command with a radius of approximately 10 pixels. Copy Ctrl+C and paste on a new layer Ctrl+V. Hold down the Ctrl key (or, more conveniently, the bottom button of our wonderful Wacom pen) and drag the new leg into place, flipping it horizontally so that it becomes the left one! Next, using levels (but not the transparency of the layer), we adjust the brightness and contrast of the leg so that the transition point becomes invisible. It turned out like this.
Next, using an eraser, with a transparency of 50%, and light movements of the pen, we erase our allowance along the contour of the new leg to the background and in the places of the folds on the trousers. You can feel like a wizard.
Now we take on the most difficult and delicate task in photograph processing - restoration of a woman’s face. Here everything is somewhat more complicated, but not hopeless. The most difficult thing is to restore the eyes and nose area. We will then make the forehead using the usual tools. We can try to “just” draw the eyes, but I’m clearly not much of an artist, so we won’t even try. You can only complete small details, but no more. All that remains is to borrow eyes elsewhere, no matter how blasphemous it may sound.
Having carefully studied all the characters in the photo, I found that her daughter’s eyes are, in principle, very similar. This means that our daughter will be a “donor”. Turn on the lasso with the L key, select the area of the eyes and nose on the daughter’s face (again with a small allowance), make a feather of about 10 px, copy it, paste it onto a new layer and drag the fragment to a new place. First you need to compare the distance between the eyes with the original. Naturally, in a child it is somewhat less. Therefore, we transform the fragment to the required size. For accuracy, turn on the grid (Ctrl+«). Then we put our eyes back in place.
All that remains is to lightly work with the eraser on the eyebrows and the eyes can be considered finished. The most seemingly complex operation in photograph processing was quite easy for us. Naturally, if there is no “donor” in the original photo, you can use another suitable photograph. Everything is at the mercy of your imagination, the main thing is not to give in to difficulties. Then we proceed according to the old scenario: “no noise, no dust...”, that is, we eliminate the remaining minor insignificant defects.

After we have eliminated all (or almost all) defects in the image, we need to bring it into good view: raise contrast, tint.
First, let's normalize its histogram using the Levels adjustment layer. In order to perform toning (if necessary), the image must be converted to RGB mode. After this, we apply toning in the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. The transparency of this layer can be varied by changing the strength of the toning. We will address the issue of toning in more detail in one of the next issues of the magazine.

The result you see below took approximately two hours of work time. I’ll say right away that my friend was very pleased with the result!.. and brought a bunch of old photographs.
In conclusion, I want to say: treat the features of the past as carefully as possible. Try, if possible, to bring less new things into old photographs, otherwise you will end up with a “remake”. We have now deliberately considered a rather difficult situation when we had to restore the missing elements. But, by doing so, we only once again explored the capabilities of Photoshop tools in photo processing. Before taking on such work, especially if you are not doing it for yourself, be sure to discuss with the customer the possible consequences of such a deep restoration. Sometimes it is better to leave some moments as is, rather than distort or add on your own - after all, this is history!

In this lesson you will learn one of the ways to restore old photographs.

Before starting restoration, it is necessary to draw up a rough work plan in order to do everything sequentially and not rush from one thing to another. The following sequence of actions is recommended:

1 . Work only with a copy of the scanned image.
2. Crop the image. Be careful not to touch important details.
3. Determine the main problem areas for retouching, perform the necessary operations. This is the longest and most labor-intensive stage.
4. We remove noise and other unwanted deposits. Don’t try to completely remove the film grain and make something like a digital photo! After all, during restoration it is important to preserve the spirit of that time.
5. Adjust brightness, contrast, saturation. In color photographs, we adjust the color balance, especially paying attention to the correct skin color.
6. We sharpen the image.

So let's get started with the process. Here is our original photo.

Step 1. Restoration usually begins with the correction of relatively large areas. The best way to do this is to use the tool Patch(Patch tool). The pictures show an approximate sequence of actions. Large areas in the background are corrected first, then smaller ones.

Step 2. After retouching the large defects, we will move on to the small ones. To do this we use tools Healing brush(Healing Brush) Spot Healing Brush(Spot Healing Brush) and Stamp(Clone Stamp). Don't be afraid to experiment with these tools.

Tool Spot restorative It is advisable to use a brush to remove only very small spot defects. For larger areas it is better to use regular Healing brush And Stamp.

The screenshot below shows the areas where the specified tools were used: in red - Healing brush, green - Stamp. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that when working with the Patch and Healing Brush tools, there are undesirable effects when working on the edges of the image, especially if they have White color. To avoid this, first simply paint over these areas with the nearest color using a brush, and then work with the healing tools.

This is what should happen at this stage.

Step 3. Now we will work with more serious damage. To reconstruct the image of the man's left eye, we use the image of his right eye. An extreme case is specifically taken here. If there are other photographs of this person, then it is better to take the missing parts of the image from them, it will be more correct.

So, select the area around the right eye and copy it to a new layer by clicking CTRL+J. Next, click CTRL+T to apply Free Transform.

Step 4. Right-click inside the frame and select Flip horizontally(Flip Horizontal).

Step 5. In order to correctly place the reflected copy of the eye, reduce the opacity of the layer and align the eye relative to the original image. Then press ENTER and return the opacity to 100%.

Step 6. Add a layer mask by clicking on the icon marked with a green circle at the bottom of the layers palette.

Step 7 Press D to reset colors, then select the tool Brush(Brush). Use a black brush to mask off the excess areas. Remember that white reveals and black hides. To achieve soft, invisible transitions, use a brush with soft edges.

Tip: Hold your finger over the X key to quickly switch between black and white. If you have hidden the excess somewhere, paint this area white. If you want to see only the mask, click on its thumbnail in the Layers palette while holding ALT.

Step 8 Now we restore the image of the left ear in the same way. To accurately adjust the shape, use the tool Deformation(Warp).

A small area of the hairline on the left side of the face is also restored. I remind you that each operation must be performed on a new layer. This should become the main rule of work.

Step 9 After restoring all large areas, let's return to the tool Stamp and we will correct all the shortcomings. You need to do this on a new transparent layer by checking the Sample all layers option.

You can merge layers if necessary.

This is what should happen.

Step 10 Select all layers. Let's merge the layers into a group by clicking CTRL+G. Then create a new layer above this group by clicking ATL+SHIFT+CTRL+E, and call it Noise.

Step 11 Now we reduce the noise using the filter " Reduce noise"(Reduce noise).
An important point: the greatest noise suppression should be done in the blue channel, since it contains the largest amount of noise. It is advisable to set the detail retention for this channel to 0%.

Step 12 After noise reduction, you need to restore image sharpness. There are many different ways to do this, including several lessons on our website:

This tutorial uses a method of sharpening using a filter. Colour contrast(High Pass), but personally I prefer the mask method as it is the most manageable. I will not dwell in detail on the sharpening techniques; those interested can familiarize themselves with them from the above lessons. I would like to add that if you plan to print the restored photo, you should increase the sharpening more, as printers slightly blur the image. This is a pretty important point.

Step 13 Often there is a need to increase sharpness only in certain places. To do this, you need to create a layer mask, as we have already done, and paint over the unnecessary areas.

Step 14 Create a new adjustment layer Curves. Let's give the curve an S-shape to increase contrast.

Step 15. Now let's compare the results.

Restoring a photograph can seem like a time-consuming and sometimes impossible task. However, this is absolutely not true, because Photoshop tools will help you easily restore even the most seemingly damaged picture from time to time.

In this material you will learn how to apply corrective corrections, you will learn how to work with such useful tools like the Healing Brush Tool and the Clone Stamp Tool, and also understand the basic principles of old photographs. But before starting the lesson, you need to understand one simple fact - for each photo you always need different approach, because no a certain rule restorations, but the methods and techniques described below can be applied to any damaged image. You just need to learn how to combine different techniques and then you will be able to restore a picture of any complexity of damage. Well, let's get started!

Step 1

Open the image in Photoshop. First you need to adjust the contrast, because the image looks too light. To do this, it is better to use a Levels adjustment layer. Remember that for color correction, using adjustment layers is much preferable to using the Adjustments menu. The point is that using a layer allows you to adjust colors at any time. In addition to the flexibility of work, you can also delete the adjustment layer and thereby return to the original settings.

So apply a Levels adjustment layer. To apply it, click on the Create new fill or adjustments Layer icon, which is located in the Layers palette:

A menu with level settings will open in front of you. By moving the right and left sliders, try to achieve the desired result:

Step 2

Now you need to get rid of seams, dust and dirt. To clean up such defects, you can use the Healing Brush Tool (Hotkey J):

The principle of operation of the healing brush is simple, as you will now see. First, let's get rid of the seam on the girls' fur coats. So, select the main layer, adjust the desired brush diameter (slightly larger than the seam) and hold down the Alt key and, without releasing, click approximately in the place, as shown in the picture below:

Then release the Alt key and go over the seam:

As you understand, the healing brush uses the pixels of the selected area and mixes them with the pixels of the defective area. This and this tool have settings that you need to become familiar with. Right-click on the canvas:

Size — brush size
Hardness - edge hardness. The tighter the edges, the clearer the blending boundary will be.
Spacing - intervals. You can set brush spacing.

The defect on the sled can only be corrected using the Stamp tool:

This tool works in a similar way, but the only difference is that it does not blend the pixels. To eliminate a seam, use Alt to select a “suitable area” and then paint over the seam with it:

As you can see, using this tool it is convenient to eliminate defects on the sharp edges of objects. Using the methods described above, get rid of all defects:

Step 3

Now all that's left to do is make the photo a little clearer. To do this, make a duplicate of the main layer (Ctrl+J) and select Filter – Other – High Pass: