How to Correct and Old Photo in Photoshop

On this basic video tutorial Aaron Nace from Phlearn explains how to fix an old film image that has many defects using Photoshop.

This video will look at how to fix things such as dust and scratches and color correct some of the effects of time to this aged photo. Now it won’t look like a modern high megapixel modern digital image but the goal is to make it look as best as possible.

Nace starts by removing the dust and scratches from the sky of an aged photo, by using the ‘dust and scratches’ filter (Filter>Noise>Dust and Scratches) on a new layer (and by applying by using a black layer mask with the alt key just mark the skies so that the rest of the image will not be effected by the blur).

The next part is to remove some lines using the healing brush tool tool – fairly easy (although not always perfect). Now we need to lighten the sky – Nace suggest to view the image in black and white and create a ‘Black and White’ adjustment layer, then use a curves adjustment layer to brighten the sky.

The final stage has to do with adjusting the color of the image and removing any cast. Nace suggest that you would create a ‘Hue/Saturation’ adjustment layer and click on ‘Colorize’. Choose the desired blue for the sky and then mask in the area that needs color correction to fix the cast.

This isn’t the first time that we are looking at fixing old images in Photoshop. In the past we posted Photoshop expert Howard Pinsky’s video on “How to Repair Old Photos in Photoshop” which is much shorter than this one but still worth a watch.

You can find many more Photoshop video tutorials on LensVid’s Photoshop section (and you can find a lot more Phlearn videos on our special Phlearn subsection).

Iddo Genuth
Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.

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