Fan of creative technology, elearning, instructional design and a little geeky

Fixing up old photos with Adobe Photoshop

As part of the April 2015 Adobe User Group meeting in Perth, I recorded a series of videos that covered some of the tips we reviewed during that meeting. For a full read-up about this meeting, please visit the Rejuvenating old photos and documents meeting round-up page.

Video 1: Converting an old sepia tone back to black and white

Adobe User Group member Simon C. demoed using a Black and White Adjustment layer, to non-destructively convert a sepia toned image back to black and white. The image is retained as an RGB (Red, Green and Blue) image, and with the adjustment sliders you can control which colours in an image are converted to certain grey tones.




Video 2: Removing brown age spots and browning from scanned documents

Adjustment layers become even more powerful when they are combined with layer masks. On the night I demoed converting the individual adjustments into Smart Objects, each time nesting the adjustments. One of the things to watch-out for when using this technique is bloating of your file size. In the tutorial she changes that technique and merges layers instead.




Video 3: Complex fixes with Clone Stamp tool and Clone Source panel

Most Photoshop users will have worked with the Clone Stamp tool. But the true power of the tool when it comes to retouching seriously damaged images, is to use it in combination with the Clone Source tool.




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