How can I fix a old picture?

Question

I have old picture's of my family that I'm tring to restore. I am using adobe 7 and its taking forever. I am scaning the picture in and retouching them using the cloning tool in adobe. The pictures have crack marks in them and white specks and some are faded. Is there a program that I can use that will automaticly fix them? A free program would be perfered. I have over 200 photos to restore.

Answer 1

If you have Adobe Photoshop 7, there is another tool, the Healing Brush, that is faster than Clone and copies contrast and texture from the sample area. It is much faster for fixing cracks.

For fixing speckles, try the Noise Filter/Despeckle or Dust and Scratches under Filters.

For fading I use Image/Adjustment/Levels. (These adjust White Balance) Select an eyedropper Black, Gray, or White, then click on a matching area in the pic. Keep trying different eyedroppers/areas until you get better color. Then use Image /Adjustment/Saturation or Color Balance or Brightness and Contrast to fine tune the color .

You can try Image/Adjustment/Auto Levels or Auto Color or Auto Contrast. But you will probably still have to tune color. Epson scanner software has some auto crack fixing, but I don't know how well it works.

Good Luck

Answer 2

I restored about 300 slides from my parents' trip to Europe taken about 25 years ago. Lots of dust, color fading, dark and light areas. There are no real shortcuts when you want a professional looking result. If you don't know how to use the "Heal" tool in Photoshop, trying using it on areas containing solid color. It saves so much time. You use it the same way you would the clone tool; you just have to sample a clean area once and click over areas that need fixing. It's a smart tool, but sometimes it works well and sometimes not. Just try it out.

Answer 3

There's a function in 'Corel Photo paint' which is excellent for removing scratches without having to use a clone tool. It's not 'free' though.

Answer 4

possibly use healing tool and clone stamp to patch up blemishes, if you scanned images make sure to use high resolution 300/ 600+ , anything partials and specks may not be on image, but rather dust, and could patch or clean glass and rescan, with photoshop you could try gaussian blur for one layer, also check rgb channels to view grainy levels, also check diffuse anisotropic, and unsharpen mask for another duplicate layer, ..

Answer 5

Certainly u need only to go to the help section of photoshop.
or u can get another free full functional software,google picasa .But it is best for only giving differnt colour effects and tones.But it is free and quality program too ,so worth downloading.(here http://angle-mine.blogspot.com )easy operable for beginners.

Answer 6

juss take it to walgreens photo center!!!!