Technical Note: Photo Restoration

Fred Sawyer's restoration of "Ruth Paulson looking angelic"

As you may have noticed, the photos posted in this blog are in their "raw" form. I digitize them directly from the glass negatives and don't clean them up at all. The focus in this blog is the history and background of the photos - their people, places, and events. Restoration of the photos, I will leave to my reader/viewers.

Since this isn't my area of expertise, I've asked Fred Sawyer to share some tips on how to go about this process.  He is using Pixlr - a highly reviewed software that is available free on the Internet.

A Simple Photo Restoration - "How to let the picture tell the story"

by Fred Sawyer

As a genealogist there is nothing more frustrating than having old family photo's with damage. As a viewer your eyes are always drawn to the damage and often it takes away from the photograph. With digital images and the availability of online photo editing it is now possible to do simple repairs yourself with no cost. With Pixlr available at www.pixlr.com/editor it is now possible to do your own restoration on a website that looks like your own software application.

Open and Save:

Once on Pixlr,  open the image from your computer or device. 

The first thing to do is to create a duplicate image so as not to work with the original image. Using the Save option is the best way to do this. Once the image is open, save the image with a new name such as restoredimage/name. Once this is done your are ready to touch up the image and not harm the original. 

Start to restore

• Select the clone stamp under the tools option. The clone stamp tool allows you to overlay the damaged area's by cloning parts of the image that are good over the damaged area. 

• Once you have selected the clone stamp tool select a brush size located at the top left of the screen. The second row of brushes are of various sizes and are soft brushes which soften at the edges to allow for less noticeable work. With the comparison photo I used a soft brush with a fifty setting for the small areas and either a 100 or 150 for the larger areas. A smaller brush allows for more detail work. 
• Once the tool is selected and the brush size is chosen place the target over an area adjacent to the damaged area with comparable color composition and press the CTRL key while right clicking the mouse. This will use the imagery selected by the target and place it wherever you right click elsewhere on the image. 
• If at any point there are mistakes there is an undo option under the Edit tab. Right click and use different area's to duplicate to create a more random look. 

Save

Save often as you work to not lose your work to an unexpected event. Patience and practice make doing these repairs easier. At first the repairs are seen but after a while they will be difficult to see.

                                                                                           Fred Sawyer 

Identifiers:

Photo is from the earlier post: "Ruth Paulson Looking Angelic"

Author of this post: Fred Sawyer