Whilst not being able to do any studio photography or much photography at all with the lockdown, I did a commission to use my skills to repair and restore a very old photograph, and seek to get a print done. The basic starting point was a customer scan of her old battered photo, which was of an old Cudworth Ladies football team. I’m told the photo is about 100 years old and features the clients grandmother, so she was keen to see it in a better state…
This was the starting point.
The basic process was to to first straighten the image and tidy up the scratches and obvious bad marks on the photo. This I did using Photoshop CC 2020. And resulted in this next version…
Once this was done, I tidied up the bit hanging off the bottom, effectively cutting it out and re-joining digitally. So then it looked like this.
And then I looked at crating the outside edge of the photo, to frame the changes I still had to do. This resulted in this next version. I also tidied up by filling in the top left and bottom right of the image. And then the top right corner too – these were done using cloning techniques in the main.
The missing top part was also tricky, it was clear what need to be added but not easy to clone, and some ‘painting’ of the grid was required.. Top of the panel fencing was reasonably straightforward but had some trouble matching shades. But generally pleased with the result and the next stage was this.
The bottom corner was a challenge as not too much to go on. Cloned a bit from the right corner and built up the rest from the surroundings including painting some more of the ladies’ sock.. This gave the final image.
If you have any challenges and would like a photo restored/repaired, call me on 07803 710700 or message me on andy@jfyp.co.uk for a quote or more info.
Andy