Cristiano on Tech/Life Photo Restoration
I have been restoring some old photos for my family recently and discovered I’m “pretty good” at it. Today I fixed an old photo of my grandparents from Italy, taken in 1941. The photo was heavily damaged, had so called “photo paper texture” and was striped by either light or something else.
After less than half an hour of editing I had version 1, which I threw away and quickly redid a version 2 in a few minutes which can be seen below together with the original.
I think it all worked out pretty well but wanted to challenge myself, so I decided to try and colorize the photo. This is what I ended up with.
Admittedly not my best work but we need to make mistakes to learn. I might recolorize it somewhere in the future, but as my mom as happy with the results I might not bother for a while.
The clothes looks good but I doubt the face, it was over retouch I think.
I don’t know. I could try a different contrast and highlight on the faces by playing with some of the color channels, but if you look at the original, they are already very pale and smooth.
I would agree with Mchilly, but a very good attempt. Try reducing the opacity or saturatation of the colour add some selective noise with blur to add back some texture. Do as seperate layers so you can delete or tweak as necessary.
Thanks. I still have to give it a retry when I have time. My mother already reprinted the photo in color and both she and my dad love it, even while I don’t really. I see you do restoration too. Do you think it would be worth doing restorations as a side job/hobby?