Tutorials for editing, enhancing, and restoring your photos & images.
Restoring Old Photos Part 1
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For my first tutorial, I thought I would use Adobe Photoshop to work with an old photo that has been discolored over the years. Taking it from the original red-tinted state to the finished color-restored state takes quite a few steps, so I'll be posting the how-to in two parts. Part 1 will cover how to remove most of that red color that has ruined the photo.
Open the original picture and start a new adjustment layer under the layer tab. Find the "Selective Color" layer and click that.
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Now we've got a little window popped up with four setting bars and boxes. This is where you'll have to learn to judge the colors on your own and sort of play with it; but for my picture we're going to use the following settings.
**Remember, not all photos turn out the same so to get your picture looking its best, play with the settings.**
At the top of your "Selective Color" options, there is a a drop-down menu. For now, leave it on red. We've got a lot of red in our image so we are going to try to edit some of that out now.
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Cyan: We want to set this at around +30.
Magenta: To subtract a lot of the red, we'll go to -53 or somewhere close to that.
Yellow: Leave this one alone. You might want to play with it a little to see if it enhances your photo, but it didn't do much for mine.
Black: We want this at +100.
Now we have reduced a lot of our redness, so let's move on and try to enhance the colors more.
Go to the top and select your yellows. Again, we are going to change the color values.
Cyan: 100
Magenta: -27
Yellow: 74
Black: 100
Skip the other color options and go to whites now.
Cyan: 100
Mageta: 0
Yellow: -34
Black: -29
Moving on to the neutrals next.
Cyan: 75
Magenta: 12
Yellow: 0
Black: 0
Next, choose the blacks and set all color values to 100. Make sure that the circle next to "Relative" at the bottom is selected and then click "okay," "apply," "close," or whatever your particular version says.
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Of course, this doesn't look as perfect as the original, but it also doesn't have that red tint taking over everything. :) Next up, part 2--restoring the color.
