Video description

With the emergence of digital editing software and growing interesting in genealogy with companies like Ancestry.com, interest in photo restoration is on the rise. In this video, photo restoration expert Bryan Burch will cover the basics of this important topic, from importing your images to analyzing the damage and making corrections in Adobe Photoshop. After showing you how to get started by setting up your workspace, he’ll cover all the techniques you need to know to repair and preserve your images, including: making adjustments with the Clone Stamp tool, Healing brush, and Content Aware tool; correcting exposure with the Camera Raw filter; adjusting colors by correcting white balance and adjusting saturation and detail; fixing imperfections like scratches, specs, and dust; removing stains; and more. With his characteristic friendly and approachable style, Bryan will walk you through several example images and then pull together all the techniques he has demonstrated with one primary image, showing how to restore an image from start to finish. He wraps things up by showing how to make the final touches to your image and save your files for easy retrieval whenever you need them. Project files will accompany the video so you can follow along as he works–and at your own pace.

Table of Contents

Get started on your first project with tips on setting up your workspace for efficiency, digitizing, and importing your images. Also learn the critical task of analyzing the damage to your project image.

Welcome 00:01:49

Setting Up Your Workspace 00:05:39

Importing the Image 00:04:32

Analyzing the Damage 00:06:19

Learn the foundations of photo restoration and discover the most used tools and techniques in Photoshop for this work, including the Clone Stamp tool, Spot Healing brush, and Content Aware Move tool. Create and manage layers for a clean, well-organized project.

Working with Layers 00:08:29

Clone Stamp Tool 00:05:04

Spot Healing Brush 00:05:32

Content Aware Move Tool 00:03:38

Learn how to use different techniques for correcting exposure. Many of the images you will be working on will have improper exposure values and knowing how to properly correct them will save you time and work.

Camera Raw Filter

Adjustment Layers

Learn about color balance and color temperature. Fix improper white balance using the Camera Raw filter in Photoshop, photo filters, and adjustment layers. Also, learn how to restore the RGB channels to a grayscale image, which gives you access to filters and effects not available to grayscale images.

Changing Grayscale to RGB

Correcting White Balance

Photo Filters

Saturation and Detail

Fix smaller imperfections such as scratches and cracks, and remove specks of dust. Combine different methods and techniques to correctly fix this damaged or missing data.

Removing Dust and Scratches

Removing Cracks

Learn different methods for removing stains caused by water damage, rust discoloration, or mildew including a very powerful but under used technique.

Magic of the Color Layer

Removing Stains with the Content Aware Move Tool

Put all the techniques together plus some news ones such as Transform and Warp, as well as “borrowing” from other photos. Learn how to replace or repair large sections of missing data and how to blend your layers so as to leave a seamless correction.

Advanced Clone Stamp Tool Techniques

Borrowing Parts of a Photo

Learn how to make the final color and contrast adjustments to your completed restoration, discover methodologies on cropping and straightening images, and learn how to save your masterpiece in the correct format for its intended use, whether it is web or print.

Final Adjustments Layers

Crop and Straighten

Save for Printing