Repairing Old Photos Copyright 2003 - JMA - All Rights Reserved

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Not too long ago, after months of procrastination, I decided to clean my attic. In an old shoebox I discovered treasures from long ago, in the form of family photographs, dating as far back as 1916 and possibly even earlier. Many of the photographs that were once a chronicle of family events were marred by scratches, faded and discolored, and some even torn when they were hastily placed in their safe haven as a reminder of how life was long ago. As I gazed at these ancient relics, I couldn't help but ponder over how far technology had progressed in the past century. After sorting through the pile, I separated the pictures that contained the faces of those most familiar to me. Then I realized, that in order to preserve the images for another generation, I had to store these memories in a format less likely to be damaged by the elements. I decided to scan as many of the photographs as I could in one evening session to see just how difficult the task would be to restore the images to their original appearance. I put aside those photos that were spoiled only by small scratches, since the repair effort would be negligible, and concentrated on those with multiple defects I wanted to challenge the abilities of Paint Shop Pro and my own, to see just how much could be done to restore the images to their indigenous state, at least in a digital sense. After scanning several photographs, it became intuitively evident that much of the repair work could be done using just a few of the basic tool in Paint SHop Pro, and of course a little patience. In this tutorial, we will discuss how to use these basic tools to effectively eliminate scratches, rips, discoloration and other defects that plague old photographs.

Figure 1. The Raw Image The image is a scan of a photograph taken circa 1916. Beyond the discoloration that occurred over the years, there are a multitude of problems. In some areas, the emulsion has been totally lifted from the paper and there is evidence of scratches, spots and even stains. Along the right edge of the picture there is a dark band, origin unknown, and the original studio ligting produced unpleasent shadows in the girl's face.

Figure 2. Cleaning the Image The first thing we want to do is to clean up all the dust and other tiny marks that may have resulted from the scan. The best way to do this is with the Edge Preserving Smooth filter. To apply the filter go to the Main Menu bar and select Adjust > Add/Remove Noise > Edge Preserving Smooth. When the dialog window opens enter a a value for the Amount of Smoothing. For this image a value of 5 was used to remove the imperfections.

Figure 3. Establishing a Baseline efore we can begin the repair operation, we need to establish a baseline image to work from. The baseline image should be even toned either Color or Grayscale. Since the oiginal photo was taken on Black and White film we want to convert the image to Grayscale to remove the yellowish tint. The Grayscale feature is applied by selecting Image > Grayscale on the Main Menu bar. The image was then Crop ever so slightly to removed the frayed edges of the paper.

Figure 4. Removing the Dark Band To remove the dark band on the right side of the image, we first make a selection of the darkened area using the Lasso tool with the Selection Type set to Point-to-Point. Once the selection is in place, we can use the Levels command to adjust the brightness. The dialog window below reflects the setting used for this image.

Figure 5. Restoring the Detail in the Backdrop In the areas of the backdrop, where the damage was caused by the lifting of the emulsion, the lost detail can be repaired using the Clone Brush Tool.  Locate and click the Clone Brush icon on the tool bar to activate the clone brush. In the tool option palette select the brush properties that will work best for the particular area being repaired.  Here we are dealing with rectangular shapes so the best chice for the brush is square shaped and since we will be sampling the area dynamically as we clone, we want the brush to be in Aligned Mode. The entire set of brush properties that was used to repair this section of the image is shown below.

Figure 6. Repairing Scratches The easiest way to repair scratches is to use the Scratch Removal tool which appears as a trowel icon on the Tool bar. The tool works best on smooth backgrounds and uses the background image details to create new information to replace the scratch. It should not be used to repair textured areas or where the backgrounds have a lot of detail. To use the Scratch Removal tool, click the trowel icon on the Tool bar and in the Tool Option palette, select a Width value for the bounding box. The Bounding box is fromed each time the cursor is dragged along the length of the scratch. The Width of the bounding box should be the smallest pixel value that will allow the Bounding Box to enclose the scratch without the sides of the box touching any part of the scratch.

Figure 7. Stain Removal The stains in the floor tiles were removed b making two passes with the Clone Brush. On the first pass, the area to the right and perpendicular to the girl's shoe was sampled and cloning was performed by moving in the horizontal direction. On the second pass, the area parallel to the girl's shoe was sampled and cloning was done in a diagonal direction upwards and to the left.

Figure 8. Spot Removal The spots in the tiles were removed by first making a selection of the damaged tile, and then sampling the area directly behind the selected tile. The Clone Brush wa sthen used to fill the selected area with the pixel information from the tile outside the selection. Once the tile was completed, the Move tool was used to reposition the selection marquee to the right, the distance of one tile, and the cloning process was repeated.

Figure 9. Removing the Shadow in the Girl's Face The right side of the girl's face is almost lost in the shadow of the studio ligting. To balance the lighting on the face, as selection was made of the shadow area using the Lasso tool with the Slection Type set to Freehand. The selection was then Feathered by 20 pixels to provide a more natural transition between the selection and the background when the changes are applied. The area inside the selection was lightened using the Levels command which can be found on the Main Menu bar under Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Levels. In the Levels dialog window, the center diamond slider was moved to the left until the shadows almost disappeared.

Figure 10. Restoring That Old Look The original photo in its pristine state had a brownish tint to it, typical of the early photographic processes. To restore the old look, the image was first converted to 16 Million colors using Image > Increase Color Depth > 16 Million Colors (24 bit). Then to add the Brownish tint the image was colorized by selecting Adjust > Hue and Saturation > Colorize from the Main Menu bar. In the Colorize dialog window the Hue was set to 25 and the Saturation to 30.

Figure 11. Adjusting Color Saturation As a final step, the image color was saturated to produce a more natural Sepia effect without the reddish cast normally found in digital Sepia toning. This was done using the Automatic Saturation Enhancement feature located in the Photo toolbar. In the Auto Saturation dialog window, the Bias was set to More Colorful, and the Strength wa set to Weak to obtain the results shown.

Figure 12. Before and After Looking at the two imageswe can clearly see that the discoloration is gone and almost all the defects have been repaired. Restoration is laborious at best, but with a little patience , the end results ususally justify the means. With just 3 basic tools we were able to digitally repair the damage that was sustained by this photograph over the 87 years of its life.

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