Photo Restoration and Retouching for Prints

Making the Old Look New Again

Original scanned image on right. Restored image on left.

I was contacted by a client that needed a photo restoration completed as a framed print as a Christmas gift for his wife (who is also the adventurous girl featured on horseback in the photo). The original image was a 3"x3" print that had, at first glance, had some color balance issues. This may have been due to the age of the image, or just the original film stock or development. So, I added color balancing to the "to do" list. 

After scanning the image at a high resolution (600dpi worked well for this small print) I brought the .tiff file into Adobe Camera Raw to take a closer look. Not only were the colors off, but the subject was blurry. This may have been partially due to the motion of the subject, but the focus was also more on the background and less on the subject. added some selective sharpening to my list as well.

The third item to be addressed is any dust, scratches, or other details that were not a part of the original scene. There following is the order in which I went in to make the fixes to the finished photo. You may have a process that works better for you, as this is just one way to approach this type of digital restoration.

Original unedited image on right. Color Balanced image on left.

Color Balancing and Contrast

There are many ways to adjust white balance on an image. I chose to start with Adobe's Camera Raw editor, because it has a White Balance Tool shaped like an eye dropper that allows you to set white balance based off what should be white in the final image. I clicked on the water spray coming off the horse as my white point and the brown/red color shift went away for the whole image. Essentially the White Balance Tool shifted the colors to a cooler white balance and also away from a magenta and towards a green tint. 

From here, you can make some adjustments to overall contrast, saturation, and sharpness, but I am saving those steps for later since I need to make some changes to local (affects specific image areas) parts of the image before I make any more global (affects the whole image) adjustments. For this I opened the image in Photoshop CC.

Cleaning up Unwanted Artifacts

Upon closer inspection, there were several little dust particles and color splotches that may have been in the original camera that the image was taken with, on the paper it was developed onto, or else some of them may have been on the image when it was scanned. Luckily Photoshop has some great tools to fix those blemishes. The Spot Healing Tool may be used to brush over any of these offending spots. Photoshop will then analyze the area around the blemish, and use the surrounding image information to replace it. There is also a Healing Brush Tool that may be used to select the sample area that will replace the blemish if Photoshop's automatic selection does not work out well.

These three images are various samples from the trees, water, and shoreline. These areas of the image do not feature many important details and are easily fixed by the Spot Healing Tool. Fortunately, there was very little in the way of blemishes on the little girl or her horse. If you do need to remove blemishes from the subject of an image, just take your time and try out the Healing Brush Tool for better results.

Selective Sharpening, Blurring, and Finishing Touches

The final steps in the process, involved resetting the in-focus part of the image to be around the subject. You can use several different tools to make selections such as: rectangular marquee, polygon lasso, quick selection tool, and others depending on how clean the edges of the selection need to be. For this image, I needed to select the girl, horse, and any other part of the image that would be in line with where the focus needed to be. For instance, the water that is to her left also needed to be in focus to make the image look realistic, but the water behind her needed to be more blurred and out of focus for realism.

I copied the original image, and then used a mask and the brush tool to "paint in" the parts of the copied image I needed to be in focus. Then, I applied the High Pass filter to my selection and blended this top layer with a Soft Light blend mode with the original layer. Then, I went one step further and blurred the background layer with a Gaussian Blur filter to make the subject stand out even more. The final image also has some slight exposure and contrast adjustments made to the subject to help her stand out as well. You can see the difference in the three images laid out below. Click on them for a larger resolution image.

Left image with no sharpening. RIght image with selective sharpening on subject.

Left image with selective sharpening on subject. Right image with selective sharpening on subject and selective blur on background.

Left image with selective sharpening and blur. Right image with selective exposure and contrast adjustments to subject.

Printing and Result

The final print was also resized from the 3"x3" print to 8"x8". It was presented in a frame with a matte, and looked great as a surprise Christmas gift. 

For your photo restoration needs, contact us at:

haggertymedia@gmail.com
828.545.8816 
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