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Photo Editing - Tutorial 2. Damage Repair and Filters!.

Last time we looked at the basic brightness, colour, contrast and crop tools of a simple image-editing package. This page will show you how to re-touch a damaged photo using a Clone tool. The package used is Paint Shop Pro 6, but almost all photo editing software packages have the same tools.

To begin, scan your photo and save the image. This is an old family picture that has collected a few dings and nicks over the years. It has also been badly positioned on the scanner and is sitting at an angle. Begin by choosing Image-> Rotate and experiment with the settings until your photo has straightened itself out.

At this point you may wish to crop it to remove the ragged edges. I then put the border back using Image-> Add Borders to make a symmetrical 40 pixel border all round. (You will see why I made it so wide later!)

Now to start on the damaged areas. First click the Magnifier to zoom in to the parts of the photo you want to work with. Now choose your Clone Tool. Right-click on the icon and choose the Tool Options. Make sure that the brush is set at a fairly small size (5 pixels is good to start with) and quite "hard". (Better effects are obtained with a softer brush, but you will see what is happening more easily by beginning with a hard brush).

To clone over a damaged part, position the cursor over the nearest undamaged part of the photograph. This will be the Source area. Right-click once. Now move the cursor over the damaged part and left-click. You will see that the program has copied the undamaged part, and used it to paint over the dent!

You can now just literally work your way round the photo, painting out all the nicks and creases. Hold down the left mouse button and drag to make longer strokes. If you make a mistake, use the Undo arrow. Remember to save your work at regular intervals!

This part of the process can be quite time-consuming, and the success of this depends upon your own patience, skill and artistic eye, but the results can be very rewarding.

This particular photo was taken in 1927, when people still usually went to photographers' studios to have formal portraits made. (Personal cameras were massive, fragile, used glass plates instead of film and were a luxury only for the extremely wealthy!) Photographers still used old-fashioned chemicals such as silver oxide and sepia, which produced the old "brown" photos of that time.

Most computer editing packages have an Effects menu, and there is usually a Sepia Filter to re-create this lovely old-fashioned effect. You will find this in Effects -> Artistic -> Sepia. (If the "Sepia" option is greyed out, go to Colours -> Increase Depth -> 24 bits first, as in PSP the Sepia option only works in 24-bit colour). Apply the sepia filter and it will look like this -

However, in a lot of packages the Sepia effect is not very well done and the photo just looks like it has been painted brown; the colours are far too "warm". A better effect can be obtained by first adjusting the colours of the black-and-white photograph. Go to Colours -> Adjust -> Balance, and crank up the blue and green slightly, while reducing the red. This action mimics the original processing with silver oxide, which made the photo start out with a bluish tint.

Now either re-apply the Sepia filter, or choose Colours -> Colorize, for a much more realistic effect ...

Finally, why not experiment with Image -> Picture Frame for the finishing touch?

Go back to Tutorial 1... if you weren't too sure about the brightening and cropping parts!