In this tutorial, we'll take an in-depth look at restoring an old torn photograph. Restoring old family photos is something that you can do for your relatives and bring tears to their eyes, and yes this is a service you can offer to clients as well. Let's take a look at a professional workflow for restoring old photographs to their former glory.
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Introduction
When deciding on which picture to use for this tutorial, I encountered the lack of material I could use in public. The picture provided is a family photo sent to me in a terrible scan resolution. But the picture was just the kind of picture I found right for this kind of tutorial. And the end result also shows that you actually can work on poor scanned pictures and get reasonably good results.
The print size is of course limited due to this. That said. The importance with this tutorial is guiding you through the workflow process. There are some important steps, however, you must keep in mind, but never hesitate to be creative and explore different approaches. The steps to follow are:
- Make a copy of the original to work from
- Adjust the dimension you need and crop the image so you don't work on areas you don't need.
- Retouch/restore areas in the image as needed.
- Remove noise or unwanted patterns
- Adjust highlights shadows and neutrals (in color photos you would also adjust skin color)
- Adjust the brightness and contrast
- Sharpen
Step 1
And now for the workflow and tutorial. In Step 1 I have already specified dimensions and cropped the image. You would then go about the restoration. I always start out in photos like this with the patch tool and get larger areas roughly patched. Then I get more specific and change between the Patch Tool, the Healing Tool, and the Clone Tool as suited. I'll explain in more detail in the next steps.
Step 2
The Patch Tool works just as the Marquee Tool in regards to behavior. You drag a selection around the area you want to fix, then you click in the middle of your selection, and whilst holding the mouse button down, you drag the selection to another location in the picture with similarities and let go. Be sure to align your selection before you let it go. See next step and watch the alignment.
Step 3
Watch alignment in the shades of the curtain in the background. Do all larger areas in the picture. This tool not only works great, but it's also a timesaver and a good way to start your restoration.
Step 4
After getting all the larger areas done change to the Healing Brush Tool (see corresponding red color in the picture below) and Clone Stamp Tool. As you work on your picture always feel free to experiment with these tools. If you are concerned with an efficient workflow, it's good to get the grasp of these three tools.
Note that the Spot Healing Tool is also a tool you would use where, as its name suggests, there are spots. It works by just clicking on the spots you want to remove and I find myself using this often in some pictures where there are spots scattered around in the image. The workflow would then be to start out with the Spot Healing Brush, then changing between this and the Healing Brush Tool. In this picture, I had no need for it though.
As the picture below suggest, I use the Clone Stamp Tool at the edges of the picture. The Healing Brush Tool and the Patch Tool will usually create some effects you don't want when you work towards the edges of a picture. Just try it out and you'll see what I mean. Again, just change between the tools and feel free to experiment between them until you get your desired result.
Step 5
Here we have done the first part of the restoration.
Step 6
And now for the serious defections in our picture. Here we’ll use the man’s right eye to substitute his missing left eye. Just draw a rough marquee selection around his right eye, and then hit Command + J to jump the layer (copy the selection to a new layer).
Step 7
Then hit Command + T to enter the Free Transform Tool.
Step 8
Right-click inside the selection and hit Flip Horizontal.
Step 9
At this point, when you drag the selection over to where the left eye should be, you would want to lower the Opacity and align the eye with what's left of his torn away eye behind your new layer. When you have it aligned, hit enter or hit the mark I've placed the green circle around (shown below) to commit the changes. Then raise the Opacity to 100% again.
Step 10
Now, with the layer selected hit the mask-button (as indicated by the green circle below) too apply a mask.
Step 11
Now we want to paint with black in the mask to hide the areas we don't need or don't want to see. When using masks the rule is: white reveals and black conceals. If you need soft transitions, use gray. A good way to paint away areas in your selection is to lower the opacity of your brush, then sweep across the areas you want to get rid of until you have the transition result between the two layers you would want.
Bonus Tip: Keep your finger at the X button to flip between black and white. It's always good to go back and forth like this in smaller areas until you get what you want. The D key will make your foreground and background colors black and white if the colors are set to something different than black and white. If you want to see only the mask on your screen to smoothen out the areas, hold down the Alt key and click the mask.
Step 12
Now you want to do the same process with the ear. Depending on the picture you would try out different free transform modes you also could use. For the ear I did use warp. I also did a minor part from the hairline at the man's right side, rotated , and scaled it slightly just to get a better start for the missing hairline. Then I cloned where needed.
If you look at my layers here, don't be confused. The "retouch" layer is the next step, but when doing the picture I didn't decide on the hairline right away. The layer called "Layer 1" is the hairline layer.
Step 13
After getting all the larger parts into place, I went back to the Clone Tool and touched up all the edges I needed to fix. This is what I put on its own layer; the "retouch" layer. Usually you want the Opacity on the Clone Tool set down so you get better control over the cloning and can do them in more than one sweep. Just drag over the area until you get the result you desire. Command + Z is of course something you want to keep your fingers at during the whole of this process.
Step 14
Often when you go about doing the last retouching, you would use different layers for different parts. If you don't want a lot of layers, just merge them down when you are satisfied. I usually do small parts on different layers and merge them back to one "retouch" layer, but never merge these basic layers.
You don't want to merge everything together if you later see something you didn't spot right away. It's always good to be able to go back and delete only the "retouch" layer, and fix that, or the eye-layer, if you found something out of place in it, and so on.
Step 15
So now the restoration part is done.
Step 16
The next thing I do is to select all the layers and group them. Command + G. Then I make a new layer from this group. Command + Shift + Alt + E and rename it "noise." This layer is for our noise reduction. One thing I want to point out, which I probably haven't mentioned.
As you can see from my layers below I've kept the original file in the PSD as the background layer, and then turned it off. I like to keep the original file together with my PSD file, so I always start by jumping this (Command + J). This way I get an exact copy to work from, then turn of the background.
Bonus Tip: If you hold the Alt key down while clicking on the eye in front of the background image, you turn this layer on and all the other layers off. Click again to turn this layer off, and all the others on. Good for quick comparisons.
Step 17
Now we remove noise in the image. Noise reduction is done in various ways, but here I use the Reduce Noise filter found under Noise. I exaggerated the noise reduction a little for this tutorial, and believe my original numbers were 8 for the strength and about 20 for detail.
Another tip here is to go into the Advanced Dialogue and crank the strength up to full in the blue channel with 0 on details. In the red channel you crank also the strength up high with some detail, and leave the red channel with no alterations. This lets the red channel keep some of the details in the picture without blurring it too much. This technique I got from Taz Tally, and is what you also would want to do to remove patterns or scan lines.
Step 18
After noise reductions we would go on to sharpening. Sharpening is another big topic, but a common use, and a good one, is the High Pass Sharpening. When you apply the High Pass filter, you would want to use low settings.
For this tutorial, I have raised the values a bit too much, and you would want to see less in the gray picture than here. The edges are what you want to sharpen. There are also some technical issues you want to keep in mind.
When you sharpen for print, you always want to over-sharpen a little on screen. Printers have a natural way to blur out pictures a little. When you have applied the High Pass filter you would set the Blending Mode to Overlay or Soft Light. I usually make use of a little over sharpen anyhow, and then lower the value by using the opacity control.
Bonus Tip: Often you would want to sharpen only areas of the picture. In the example picture below, I've made a mask and painted away everything but the face, so this is the only part that gets sharpened. Often this technique is used for only the eyes.
The technique works also well using curves to lighten or darken areas of the picture. If you only want the eyes lighter, you would make a curves layer, hit Command + I to invert the mask, making the mask go black, and paint back with white where the eyes are, and so on. It's quicker to invert the mask than starting to paint away everything you don't want.
Step 19
In this final step, I did adjust the contrast with an s-curve. This step I didn't make use of in my original file, and you would probably want to do it before the sharpening, but I added it here just to get a more complete workflow overview, since that is the nature of this tutorial. I often make use of Command + Shift + Alt + E to make a new layer from the layers below, and that's what I would have done here.
I would have put the "curves" layer over the "noise" layer, then merging all the layers below to a new layer on top. Next sharpen this with the High Pass filter, keeping the curves layer intact, just in case I wanted to go back and adjust the last two steps.
Conclusion
So this was a the whole process of restoring an old, torn photograph. But keep in mind that a lot of these steps can be explored in greater depth. Always experiment and look for things you could add to your workflow to get an even better result.
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User Comments
( ADD YOURS )aleso December 14th
looks nice, good result!
http://www.3dand2dmag.wordpress.com
( )itsnate December 14th
Not too shabby
( )BroOf December 14th
Wow! But this wasn’t new to me. But great work!
( )rommi November 5th
Thanks for the information. It will be useful for many.
( )alexi November 20th
hanks for the information
( )Nachtmeister December 14th
Nice but the original looks not so extrem cross-eyed like the final. This is because of the flip from the left site.
I think there will be some better solutions for this Part.
( )Alex Standiford May 9th
Agreed. A little tweaking of that eyeball would have went a looong way.
( )Ariful Alam Khan December 14th
Nice and important tutorial I think
( )Aloke Pillai December 14th
Awesome stuff
( )Joe December 14th
A nice tutorial =)
( )Webling December 14th
nice tut, but what about the squint?
( )doesn´t look real.
TheArtist December 14th
The duplicating of the face is a HUGE error, faces are not symmetrical as you see by the creases in his smile lines, doing this has resulted in the guy being cross-eyed. And, removing the Photographers stamp and the final curve used… I would call this a Photoshop disater!!!!!
I’ve been using PS for nearly 25 years and this is an example of some serious mistakes.
( )Smarter than you March 21st
Photoshop was developed in 1990, 2009 – 1990 = 19, I LOLD!
( )Mesrop April 7th
Hahaha =]
But he has a good Point.
Shinfo October 9th
I have been using PHOTOSHOP since I was in diapers! True story. :p
Garrett December 14th
Overall this looks good. But the iris/pupil didnt get moved to match where he was originally looking…so he looks crosseyed. and the shading is identical to the other eye…he only needed maybe 1/2 the eye and the side of the face….i dunno it just “irks” me the wrong way when i look at the fixed version. still good tut for the tools.
( )aMs December 14th
His eyes look weird.
( )K. December 14th
As for me this tuts is too weak for psdtuts.This guy afret finish looks like he have a down syndrome… People have different eyes, and half of his face.
( )carlsen December 14th
Great. Thank you!
( )Mason December 14th
That was sick.
( )Chris Fullman December 14th
One thing that should always be pointed out is to remember reflections and highlights.
When I saw the first image in this post (the original vs. restored), I immediately knew the left eye was copied from the right and flipped horizontally because the reflections and highlights in the (new) left eye are opposite where they should be.
Other than the highlights issue, excellent restoration work!
( )David P Crawford December 14th
Yeah, definitely a good job, but his eyes do look unnatural. No one’s eyes match like that.
( )visions of 778 December 14th
who is he? weird, anyway its great to know this tutorial is here when I need it. Creepy.
( )bart December 14th
copying and flipping eyes isn’t good solution. it looks weird. A face is not symetrical though you cannot copy and flip eyes just like that
( )slyster December 14th
In the first photo it is obvious that he is looking directly at the camera. In the touched up version he looks like he is semi retarded. That eye is really wrong. Nice work Damien.
( )Josh Drake December 14th
Lol – he’s probably the author of the tutorial or something.
Nice tut btw.
( )TI dub December 14th
His eyes look off because they are far too close togeather. Sometimes the broad strokes are more important then the technical fine details.
( )Kim December 14th
he looks cross-eyed after the flip and paste. A more sensitive repair would adjust the direction of the repaired pupil so it appears to look in the same direction as the other eye. select those pixels and shift a little to the right and decrease the amount of white on the right of the pupil.
otherwise a nice job.
( )Ray December 14th
nice n crosseyed.
( )Ahmet December 14th
Ha ha : ) Adam sanki şaşı gibi olmuş
( )glidingtide December 14th
he looks a little boss eyed!
( )Ani December 14th
Great stuff. However, if you want to do some corrections, due to the angle and position of the face his left (damaged) eye should be adjusted to match the head, which should really be slightly larger and more to the right of the photograph. As already mentioned, the guys eyes look unnatural and it’s the position of the edited eye that draws your eyes to it. No pun intended
Cool tutorial though, the site needs more like this.
( )Marisa December 14th
Very nicely written tutorial, with some good tips. Thanks for sharing!
( )Olivia December 14th
Great project — but I too have a problem with your final result: the eyes are WAY too close together. It’s very unnatural — and looks super creepy.
( )Michal Pelikán December 14th
Nice tut! However… that final stuff looks a little plastic and un-natural to me…
( )Jeff December 14th
Nice try but he’s cross-eyed. Rookie mistake!
( )Chris Hepner December 14th
The general cleanup and sharpening are very good, but you can’t get good results by mirroring half of someone’s face. Not only do you get the weird cross-eyed effect, but it doesn’t actually look like the original person unless they have a perfectly symmetrical face.
Try taking a picture of yourself and mirroring half of it; you’ll see how strange it looks. This picture looks like it could be restored without resorting to this trick as the eye isn’t totally gone, it’s just a bit harder.
( )Corey Roth December 14th
His eyes look off because of the spacing, in part. Never ever forget the proportions of the human face. There should be one eye’s width between the eyes, and one on either side of each eye, since the human face is 5 eyes across.
( )Sean December 14th
The issue with the eyes I think is that things are too symmetrical, where that doesn’t really occur naturally, there should be a little more variation to give it a more natural feel.
( )NAREK December 14th
It’s good.. but that really does look off.. His eyes are cocked and his face looks very narrow.. other than that it’s a really great tutorial!
( )macias December 14th
ooo somethin new… i have to try this one / great tut / strange eyes
( )duellsy December 14th
man that’s awesome, but yeah all i can is that he looks cross eyed a bit
( )David December 14th
I do like the tutorial, but my contention is the pattern in the suit has been lost and the pocket in his jacket has been ps’d away.
( )trillian December 14th
hes totally cross eyed now, when retouching an old photo you have to take into account that a face is never symmetrical, and when you flipped the left side of the face, you didnt use the parts of the right that were still visible, like part of the eyebrow and part of the nose..
( )afrix December 14th
Nice tut, i see lot of tuts like thta but this one is the best
http://afrix99.deviantart.com/
( )Wilclore December 14th
Great tutorial. But what happened to his ear on his left side. He now has a ear ring that he didn’t have from start.
( )Kuldar Kalvik December 14th
Eye needs some more work. Reflections should be on the other side and maybe make some parts just a bit bigger. Takes a buch of work to get it right because eyes are most important elements of face.
( )Kuldar Kalvik December 14th
Next part – realistic colorization! : )
( )w3planting.com December 14th
me too feeling the eyes should have more like it should be in original pic. but overall its Great tuts. and its more helpful for the people, who daily plays with this kind of photo manipulation job
( )Dorian December 15th
Great I Tried Adding Colour To It But It Went A Bit Wrong :S
( )BogDinamita December 15th
eyes should be further apart from another,
( )sufined December 15th
wow very nice
( )himangshu December 15th
good technique …but u little misplaced the eye copy..if we see properly his eyes are nearer to each other(unlike the original) ..i think there should be more space between them
( )Gerrit December 15th
uhm, you gave him an extra ear ring?:(
( )Casey L. Jones December 15th
The tear is gone yes, but the image screams restoration. The point to restoration is to make the image appear to be original.
http://www.recapturingmemories.com – Photo Restoration website. Launching December 20th.
( )Alex Beltechi December 15th
If his face were symmetrically aimed at the camera, then yes, flipping his right eye would work. But since he is slightly slanted, his pupils now have an intersecting path, hence the cross-eyed look. The problem is not only that the eyes are too close, but that the perspective simply demands a different view of his left eye, and reusing the other just doesn’t cut it. (@Ani: no pun intended either…)
Alas, there are some good tips on using the clone stamp tool, healing brush, and I don’t think that using the High Pass for sharpening has been covered yet on PSDTUTS, so there is plenty to use and adapt.
Thanks Damien.
( )Morales Designs December 15th
Great work but He look cross-eyed.
( )Patareco December 15th
Learned some new stuff and I restored photos multiple times!
( )Gen December 15th
Less Copystamp, more Brushes and the final picture would’ve looked alot better. Especially with a little touch on the light-reflection in the eye..
( )Frederik December 15th
Pretty cool, some useful techniques in here.
( )Mr Kuzio December 15th
Great work!
…But I can do better! XD
( )no thanks December 15th
hmmm, he’s crosseyed
( )Prydie December 15th
Unusual but interesting thankyou!
Andrew
( )MARK December 15th
BRILLIANT!!!!!!!!!!!! VERY HELPFUL!
( )EdpeppeRs December 15th
Well done, man! Well done!!
congrats! ^^
( )Matias Almeida December 15th
The author should pay more attention to detail… he lost all skin detail in the forehead and left cheek, there´s a white halo in the left ear, eyes too close together and left one should have been corrected to appear as if it´s watching the same point as the other… why did he discard the left ear, when it was full of detail to restore it? Same can be said about the lef cheek. Also he didn´t finished restoring near the left armpit…
I know i´m being heinous and that all of this doesn´t counter the tut´s usefulness at all, but I think that, besides getting paid, one posts a tut to get public feedback of one´s work.
Great tutorial! pay more attention to details and your work will improve continuously!
( )Lee Milthorpe December 15th
It’s amazing what you can do these days no matter how deteriorated old photos are!
Great tutorial!
( )cam December 15th
NEVER FLIP A FACE!
( )Faces are never symmetrical – flipping horizontally or vertically is NOT the answer for accurate retouching. Faces have variance. That’s why the result looks cross-eyed here. Look at the amount of white in the left corner of the right eye in the original photo… the sampled iris should be lined up there. Not a very realistic outcome.
demonkittyxxx May 19th
well there’s only 2 people in the world with exact “symmetrical faces”
Greeks drew faces using the phi theory which makes a body symmetrical to the other half.
but yeah it does look weird.
( )Jay December 15th
Well look at the ear buds!!!! to me it screams retouched but still very useful fort n00bs
( )Damien Haw December 15th
Hi there all.
Tnx so much for all the good comments. An you should of course listen too some of the critics here, but not all. Cam, you are wrong. In pro retouch they actually flip faces to get them symetrical, so this is often done. The eye is also alligned right in this picture. Notices a comment on it. Look through the steps and you’ll see the transparency match-up.
Besides that I do agree to some of the critics, but keep in mind that this was a workflow-tutoral, and not at tutorial to get the best outcom. As you will see if you get the psd-file, the scan res is also completly wrong in the original file.
Thanks all for the comments, and remember to use this tutorial as a guidline in fixing old or torn phots.
Cheers
( )DH
Damien Haw December 15th
Sorry about the spellings there, no chance in editing, I see
( )Damien Haw December 15th
Another comment for cam. You are kinda right that its not the right answer in many instances, but if you have any good tips for psd-tuts users you should also include them in your comment. It helps the community. And thats what we are about
Cheers
( )Damien Haw December 15th
I just had a more complete read through on all the comments, and there were some very good comments here. Alex’ and Kuldars comments should be read. Thanks all. Be sure too read them and the tutorial will be more complete.
( )Damien Haw December 15th
And too the comment about the lost pattern. I agree. I didn’t like it either. But again I have to complain about the scan res. Thats why the picture has so much blurry detail. Maybe I could have skipped it completly, but some of it are explained during the steps. I needed to write a complete workflow so the steps are included.
There’s a book by Varis called “skin”. He does some pattern-making when retouching faces. This technique could also have been used on the jacket etc. So look for Lee Varis’ book if you want to get into more detail stuff.
DH
( )insic December 15th
this is really awesome.
( )MP3 December 15th
Few problems, aside from the eye the final image is very blurry, it looks more like a painting than a photo, you lost all the film grain in the process. Yes you can argue this looks like a new photo and digital cameras don’t have grain… but they have noise. Some of the actions taken after step 15 were not needed, since those steps produced the unrealistic feel of the photo that makes it look like watercolor painting than photo.
P.S. “There’s so much silence in all this noise.”
( )(Its so loud without the noise.)
Pooponyou December 15th
eyes are too close together. go take some drawing classes noobie.
( )Martin December 15th
This Tut should be named “how to create a retard looking Person”
( )A few people talked right about the wrong look of the eyes and the unrealistic look of this picture, and I have to add the look of the ears. 1:1 Copy? With no extra modifications that they don´t look too similar? I like some of the steps in this tut, but the outcome is really bad…
Saro December 15th
Yep, you should never ever flip a face for restoration, or it will not look like the person.
( )Pike9 December 15th
Pretty Good!!!
( )Johnny December 15th
When there’s no face (eye), a comment about not flipping the face seems strange. The outcome is a little exaggerated at different parts,
but this I also read in the tutorial that was for workflow purposes. The eye is a little of, but flipping face-parts is all what fashion retouch is about.
This is not fashion though, but flipping and sizing is common, and is only a subjective matter, not at right or wrong subject.
I would like to read more comments on what to do when comments like ” never flip a face” occurs so we can share this knowledge.
A good worflow tutorial.
( )kevinsturf December 15th
woah! that’s amazing. I bet that guy must be feeling a lot betetr now. :p
( )Teo December 16th
too much simmetry too much simmetry! not good!! respect for the effort but bad bad work.sorry.
( )pica-ae December 16th
cool, but you should really move his right pupil… he is all cross-eyed…
( )Michael McKelvaney December 16th
Some great tips in this tut, but as said by others, the eyes are not executed very well at all.
( )And I don’t think that the high pass filter is needed as it is destroying the look and feel of the photo.
Furie December 16th
pica-ae
lol second that!
I have not read the tutorial yet, but judging from the before and after picture I know that this will be worth reading. Thanks and congrats with a very impressive outcome.
( )dappa81 December 16th
This looks pretty bad as a finished piece. The the photo looks like it’s been done through Photo Booth on a mac and used the Mirror effect.
( )Kyle December 16th
I’d really like to say that it’s actually upsetting to read some of the comments on here, I understand that there are some problems with the final image… but most of the flaming comments make you all sound like three year olds.
If you really want to settle the score and show how amazing you are, how about writing a tutorial that will shock and awe us all?
( )TheArtist December 16th
I would add… when duplicating something, it’s very important as a Photo-restorer to absolutely 100% LOSE your copy marks.
Example:
His eye-brows and hair are exactly duplicated, because they were left the same as the duplicate. You have to change them so they aren’t easily noticed that they are duplicated.
Notice that the eyebrows are exactly the same, as are the eyes and the tell tale duplicated hair from left for the right. Notice the sharp hair-point on the left and right side of the forehead.
Lots of detail was missed on this one.
Plus, these are beginner mistakes.
Love this site, though!
Another site to follow, and you will learn a lot too, is the PhotoshopDisasters site, lots of blaring and not so blaring mistakes are exposed over there. It helps to you to be aware of the common mistakes.
( )koen buysse December 16th
i like this kind of tutorials… not your avarage “create as leek this, design a cool that”… it’s nice…very nice, and useful !
( )costermonger December 16th
fix the eyes
( )Pooponyou December 16th
Kyle, the idea is to act like a three year old. It’s called satire. You’ll learn it when you stop judging others and learn to PS CS3. Noob.
( )Lemur December 16th
One major problem there. The eye is way too easy to tell that it was duplicated because the lighting is not consistent in both the eyes, both reflections are facing opposite directions contradicting the natural lighting.
( )Damien Haw December 16th
Hi there all and thanks for all the comment. Don’ have the time now, but Ill make some comments later. First of all. Keep in mind that this is a professional workflow tutorial, and thats it. The steps from a to z. That said. I should absolutly spent more time on the eye, but was more concerned about the writing part. But read up on some of the good comments here (not the bad) explaining what could have been done with the eye. Thanks for sharing you knowledge, those who did this
And please don’t just make a comment like “dont flip the face”. This should be a community of sharing, not lame comments.
Keep it real all and thank you all:)
-Damien
( )Furie December 16th
Well said Damien, and don’t let the stupid comments let you down. I liked your tutorial, and I hope for more to come.
( )Dave Mackey December 16th
I love it. Especially the “noobie” comments. I think Damien REALLY needed to be reminded 36 TIMES (!) that the eyes look weird. I would like to see EVERYBODY who commented about the eyes take the same source material and do a better job. That’s called putting your money where your mouth is. I really enjoy these tutorials, I generally have an “aha!…” moment with each one. However the abusive ( and abuse of ) comments make me want to vomit. Calling somebody who takes the time and effort to write a tut a “noobie” is lacks elegance and honor. “Pooponyou” wears his name well. Apparently that’s what he does best. This is my first and probably my last comment. I have no use for peaople who have nothing better to do with their lives than sit in front of their computers and go “noobie-whacking”. Shame on you.
( )Dave Mackey December 16th
Re: “eyes are too close together. go take some drawing classes noobie.” and “Kyle, the idea is to act like a three year old. It’s called satire. You’ll learn it when you stop judging others and learn to PS CS3. Noob.” from my personal favorite, pooponyou: Go look up “satire” in the dictionary you illiterate twit.
( )nastro December 17th
amazing..good restoration.
( )Saro December 17th
Sorry if i did a ‘bad’ comment, but i’m pretty convinced that you shouldn’t flip a head when the head isn’t 100% looking towards the camera. What is not in this case, and thats why it lacks and he looks like a retard and not like the actual person. I’m really happy with the techniques that you shared but in this case, there is no issue of good restoration. I hope you can agree with that, since everyone says the guy looks weird. Thanks for you effort and i’m glad you shared, keep it up.
( )Gene December 17th
great restoration, one thing that I see that you forgot is the reflection of the light in the eyes, you could just clone the other pupil so the reflection is the same, right?
( )Damien Haw December 18th
Hi Saro. I feel I should answer you directly since I used your comment as an example
You are all right about the eye, and I feel actually a little bad about not doing that part better. But, to my poor defence … when I set out writing this tutorial the only thing I had in mind was finding a picture I could use for a complete worflow tutorial, and not just bits and parts of the restoration process. And since this is my first written tutorial I spent alot of time thinking about how to lay it down. This is the processes, the steps from A to Z you should follow. Some parts can be left out, some parts should absolutly not been done to the degree as in the tutorial, but this is also said in the tutorial and is only for showing the effects better.
That was my poor defence
But I know how the process works, so trust me, follow these steps if you are serious about restoration and need to enhance your workflow process.
About not flipping. Of course you need to flip when theres a missing part in the picture, but as some stated here I should have laid down more steps and done much more to the eye. They are too close as well, as some has mentioned. Flipping is common and should be used, though, so your comment has no ground
Another thing you could do, if you got the material, is to use elements from another picture of the same man.
Another thing I want to mention is the smoothning. This is overdone in the example only to make the the difference visable on-screen. Still unsure how I should go about writing these tutorials, though. But, as an extra tip. Lee Varis has some great stuff about skin and patterns. His book “skin” is a great reasource for things you could flip around and use on ex. the jacket in this image. You want to get grain out of the way, but you don’t want to oversmooth. You want patterns. You want it organic. This example is not organic.
I have commented things during the tutorial, and also made comments different places that where would not overdo it if this was for a real job. This is only for viewing purposes.
Hope this clear things up, and again, thank you all. Appreciate all the comments:) Have happy x-mas now all.
( )meridith December 18th
I like some of what was done here. I see some have commented that it is not o.k. to copy and flip the eyes..nose..etc. That seems true though I know it is done. So how would you go about replacing a missing eye or ear? Or is that just not possible?
( )UncleSam December 18th
The Pupil of the eye should be also moved to the right, otherwise the person looks like he’s having crossed eyes.
( )Martin December 18th
Nice method/workflow, though aren’t those eyes placed a bit too narrow?
( )adforum December 18th
God work, but the cross-eyed has spoiled everything. Sorry, the work is failed.
( )Holy December 19th
Very Nice tutorial. But, the Steps 18~19, make the photo a unreal photo. And the eye cockeyed.
(sorry my bad inglish, I speak portuguese)
( )John December 19th
It looks like someone punched a dent in his face between the eyes. Sorry.
( )Damien Haw December 19th
Hi there all. I guess my comments have gone unnoticed. I have asked psd-team to take it of the site because of the eye thing. I should of course paid more attention to it. But it was the workflow and the methods (how and when to use the tools) I had in mind when writing this tutorial.
So if you get a chance to read it before its gone, I just wanted to say that these are the steps that is involed in restoration and these are the steps which should be taken. From a to z.
Have a nice holliday all
- Damien Haw
( )Hisoka December 19th
This is a good tutorial but as most have said, the author should have taken the extra step to try and fix the cross eyes as well as to polish the left part of his face, which looks unnatural.
( )Paul December 19th
Looks good, I agree with the flipping issue being wrong, but its probably more to do with the eyes being too close together, anatomically the gap between your eyes should be an eyes width and maybe you should reshape the eye too. Although these are trivial issues as for a tutorial its really good for those who know nothing about restoring photos.
( )Takumi86 December 20th
Shoot, having to see this tutorial makes me really feels in a design course room
( )Michael Knepprath December 21st
His left eye was thrown off at some point. Other than that, it is good.
( )Krzycho_666 December 21st
….eyes…. -.-
( )Jedimaster December 29th
It’s the most awsome tutorial that I have ever seen,congratulations to the designer that made that amazing PS tutorial!
( )Matthew December 30th
You fail. Just move the reflected pupil to the right to make it look like he’s looking at the camera. You made the poor fellow look mentally disabled.
( )Zach December 31st
Cant wait to see even one of the smug experts in this thread submit a tut showing us all the right way to do this.
( )Damien Haw December 31st
Hi there Matthew. I must make a comment about this, once again. I did not fail, even though you all are right about the eye. This is a worflow tutorial, and I was concerned about getting all the steps down in the right order. You should also read the tutorial, those who have made comments based on the image only.
Ive talked to the psdtuts-team, and decided that the tutorial is good enough, even concerning the eye-issue. So guys and girls, remeber the word ” workflow” and we’re all ok
Thanks again for all the comments.
Happy New Year all and stay cool!
( )ralf soliver January 1st
Putting-up a tutorial like this is even harder than the eyes.
Maybe he’ll do better if he need not mind being selfless, documenting everything for ungrateful TAD viscious amateurs who lack emotional intelligence.
great work…
( )thanks for sharing what you know
Khoa Ma January 5th
Awesome tut as usual. Thanks
( )Érica January 6th
interesting, but could be better. His eyes are so near one to other, the ear didnt need to be copied, etc etc…
but good work.
Érica
( )Joan January 8th
Cool, but I don’t like the “mirrored” eye.
( )K-leb January 12th
geee…..Damien said this is a work flow…. the rest is up to ya guys to explore and make a great finishing. Give him a break~
( )Teela January 15th
Going through the comments here, I can see that 90% of the people that have commented are incredibly stupid and sound like a bunch of seagulls. All screaming the same thing. Learn to READ! I believe you’ll find in the title of this tutorial, the word ‘Workflow’, meaning this is not the exact way you should do everything to get THIS result. It shows the steps that can be used, should they be needed. Yeah sure he looks a bit funny, but thats not the point. Damien is merely giving examples on how to attempt to correct things. If in your own work you’re doing this and it doesn’t look right to you, then you can fix it. I don’t think he has to lay out every single speck of detail just to keep you all happy.
On another note, really interesting to see your restoration process. I’ve often wondered about doing this and now seeing the steps is quite informative. Yes the result is probably not how you intended it to look, but it is the steps involved, not the final result, that benefit the reader. Great job.
( )Frank January 18th
Really good tutorial. The result looks a bit too clean in my eyes but thx for the steps. Depends on taste how far you will go with the finishing…
( )Tom January 21st
Very Classy.
I have done this a lot for my grandparents and for uni.
The only thing that was worng was fixing up the eye. The guys face looks too A-symmetrical. Which is exactly what humans don’t have. You need to move the pupil on the right eye over a tad so it looks like he’s looking in the direction and the light reflections on the eye need to be on the opposite side.
Other than that, looks really good!
( )Gerhard P January 25th
A good tutorial. However, after the described procedure, there’s certainly a lot of work left before the photo is finalized. This is how I think the man on the picture probably looked:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_48MgTo1T9xo/SXxY_Nk0r7I/AAAAAAAAAAM/sL3_rXdec2A/s400/Professional_Photograph_Restoration_Workflow_-_PSDTUTS.jpg
Keep up the good work!
( )dede January 30th
i think new eyes pupil is not right…
( )after all.. it’s great
kookimebux February 1st
Hello. And Bye.
( )JayKay February 6th
Thanks for this tut! I recently started the huge project of compiling and restoring all my family’s old photos. This is really going to help with my WORKFLOW. Don’t worry Damien the point of the tut didn’t escape all of us. Just keep doing what you do and ignore the haters
( )Andrew R. Makowsky February 6th
While this tutorial is very good. I do have slight concerns that the eyes are a little off but can be sorted depending on the time spent and type of image.
The thing i dont like is the black outline and sharpen tool.
( )KANLIYILDIZ February 6th
super tutorials & After effects
http://WWW.PAYLASCAN.ORG
( )PS Student February 8th
I saw all kinds of comments on how people WOULDN’T do the restoration, but no solutions offered. All in all the restoration was fine work. Constructive criticism only needed here, thank you.
( )Paulo February 9th
crossed eyed he is..but nice tut.
( )waqas February 20th
impressive work
( )Edmond February 21st
Iam New to this PhotoShop and the computer part of Photography.
( )I am what you might call the Old School, where I am able to see and move about a Darkroom yet totally Blind in the Computer world. This Tut is of a great service to those photogtraphers just learning and your instruction was of great help to me. I am curently in a begining Ditgal Photo Class at my local Junior College. I have a D300 Nikon and a D40 Nikon. Thank You for this Tutorial Your Message…
Ward February 25th
There is still quite a lot of the damaged eye left, so I think it would be preferable, as Gerhard P has demonstrated, to use that and reconstruct what’s missing with a bit of artistic airbrushing. Gerhard’s results look much more natural.
But well done for an otherwise informative tutorial.
( )BoBo March 12th
This is a TERRIBLE tutorial…it cost me my job
( )timshapiro March 28th
The guy looks cross eyed in the final picture. I don’t think this is the right place to go in order to figure out how to fix a picture.
( )jsgm March 30th
i think this is a kind of good restoration i wouldnt actually call it professional restoration but its an experienced restoration i have done some restoration myself and i dont like the eyes and the right side of the face looks a little sloppy i think there would have been a whole load of possibilities the outsides are well worked but there are still differences in the face coloring as i see it
keep up the work just need a little more practice
( )Kosh April 20th
Oooh, not the normal Tuts standard.
( )Basic resto with basic errors
Restoration Hair Does It Work April 24th
That is really an amazing work. I will try this out on my old collection of photos. Thanks for sharing.
( )Retireme May 6th
Great tut Damien, the result is irrelevant, the process is what helped me.
In response to the gentleman who commented above, Hair Restoration is temporary but the companies rely on your vanity to fleece you of thousands… shave it all off and be happy. If you really want hair, photoshop it on your head for the cheapest and best results.
( )Roger P. Hidalgo May 9th
Good day for all: (I’m spanish speaking so sorry for my grammar)
First of all I want to congratulate Damien for the tutorial, I was searching for how to on the web and this was the best one for me, I dont really want to go on with the rest, I had enough reading all this comments. but I just want to point some things out:
Everyone who posted comments about disliking the “eye” and so on should be following the procedure of Gerhard P plus explaining how would you do it best. this way we all learn, instead of criticizing…
Also I liked the way Teela, wrote about this it is exactly what I think.
Bobo, ha ha, you said you have lost your job? poor you… you should have been smart enough to read between lines of Damien’s tut and and get the essence of it and will do just great instead of assuming this is exactly how you should do it. (I understand Damien’s point)
From my side I just followed exactly what the workflow was about and work perfectly in one picture I needed to restore (this was the reason I was searching the web for instructions as I wanted to do a good job) which I did with this tut. Thanks again D. BTW my picture did not have the eyes involved for restoring so this tut was more than perfect for what I needed!!!
Now a message for some “again” please instead of making Damien feel bad about his finished product, you should add your own procedures ideally with pics, this way not only D, but all of us would not be loosing our time reading your no were to go comments. and we all have a great time visiting this site as it will be very instructive. How a better world of digital era and sharing will be if all of you “smart ones” do just that? Remember we want to be better but there will be ALWAYS someone much better than us out there, why not calling them up and inviting them to share? or is just the selfish minded that think they will die with the knowledge? pls if you think or want to be the best, SHARE your knowledge with others then you will become eventually the best of the west (and east)
look out and start being one of them, I dare you… would you put aside your negativism and think about others? you think that this site is visited only for people who think is best that you? no, you are wrong there are many of us that sincerely look for some guidance and help.
Now D. I congratulate your courage of taking the time, plan, write, and post this Tut. i’m sure you will double check 3 and 4 times for your next post. but this is how we grow, don’t stop here some of us really appreciate your efforts and will make use of your knowledge as there are no others with the courage enough to do the same!
Regards
P. Hidalgo
( )Cyberto May 15th
Haha I really need this
( )Nick May 17th
Gave my own go at the photo restore for some practice, let me know what you guys think. Comments are appreciated
.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26595223@N02/3538777015/
( )ag09 May 18th
awesome!!!
( )Bendik June 11th
It looked better in step 15 than 19, TBH
( )matiss July 14th
yes nice, but the eye is really bad done, its better to use cone tool only for eye ball and move it to the correct position
( )nimrod July 18th
tnx!
( )notme July 21st
those eyes are really weird…
( )Carlos E. Rivera July 23rd
Fisrt time here and I’m a little confused. I looks like people making coments are not reading the rest of the coments this is being going on since december! Come on like many of you said if you don’t like it just keep it to yourself. Enough with the bad critisism.
( )Radiocity August 29th
THX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
( )This tutorial helps me to get a new job
Mel October 5th
Well explained. Thank you.
( )Steph October 11th
An interesting approach. Overall the final image feels manipulated I wouldn’t say the eyes are too close – the right pupil is definitely cross eyed. You can see where the iris starts in the original damaged photo and the final is moved over considerably. The eye on the whole is in the correct spot though!
The shadow on the right cheekbone feels smooth and airbrushed. Also – the forehead feels flattened from the lack of shadow on the right. Taking clues from where the hot spot of the directional light you will notice it’s to the left (as reflected in the left eye). Really nice home work for the hobbyist – but not a great historical restoration.
( )Donald October 20th
Ah! The guy does look a bit retarded in the touched up photo, but it was a great use of tools in order to fix it.
( )