An old photo given new life

I was handed a box of old photos a couple of weeks back all dating ~1919 and was asked if I could breathe some new life into them.

This one was real challenge I thought.

The image was totally faded and my mother inlaw said that it was my wife's great grandfather's only surviving photo and she could barely remember what he looked like.

Well you should have seen the joy on her face after a ten minutes of photoshopping.

Hi John,

fast forward 90 years.....

'I was given this box of old electronic memory discs. I think they were called dvd's..... '

The rest you can imagine. Analogue fails gracefully, digital just fails completely.


Best wishes,

Ray

Hi John,

Want to make them swoon? Add color!

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

Want to make them swoon? Add color!

Asher

Click to expand...

Great idea, needs some thought and guidance though, as I haven't tried that before.

Make an action. Add a NEW LAYER in Color mode and attach a Hue/Sat. Adjustment Layer clipping mask. Duplicate this a number of times and give each layer a name (Skin, Cheeks, Eyes, Hair, Clothes, Background, etc.). When you paint you will be able to tweak or change the color with the Hue/Sat. layer. Try other layer blend modes (i.e., eyes might look better in Overlay or Color Dodge and lips might look better in Multiply).

Before you start you might need to "grey" a white area in order to see the color (it won't show on white). Many ways to do this but you could make a Selective Color adjustment layer/WHITE and play with the bottom (black) slider. Sometimes you might want to start with a sepia tone image.

This will make your workflow go much faster and you'll be organized.

Wow!

She looks great!

Thanks. If I remember correctly I added a Levels or Curves Adjustment layer at the top (without editing) and changed to Screen Mode...then lowered the opacity. This made a big difference.

I use an Adjustment layer in Screen Mode vs. combining the layers to avoid doubling the file size.