Photo restoration software.

JamesSwanson · Feb 14, 2022

Hello. Please advise software for restoring old photos?

yeolde · Feb 18, 2022

Photoshop

DWThomas · Feb 18, 2022

If this is just a small personal project, Photoshop Elements may well be enough to get you through at less expense. Any such stuff has some learning curve to deal with.

runswithsizzers · Feb 18, 2022

I agree with both #2 and #3, above. There are many programs that are capable of adjusting contrast to bring back the tones of faded software.
But where Photoshop really excells are:
the Clone/Heal tools to repair damaged areas
color corrections
sharpening tools

It has been a long while since I used Photoshop Elements, but as I recall, it was very powerful software. What I don't remember is how good the clone/heal tools worked. Elements may have been slightly easier to learn, but either way, expect to spend quite a bit of time banging your head on your desk before you will be able to make Photoshop magic.

DWThomas · Feb 18, 2022

runswithsizzers said:
I agree with both #2 and #3, above. There are many programs that are capable of adjusting contrast to bring back the tones of faded software.
But where Photoshop really excells are:
the Clone/Heal tools to repair damaged areas
color corrections
sharpening tools

It has been a long while since I used Photoshop Elements, but as I recall, it was very powerful software. What I don't remember is how good the clone/heal tools worked. Elements may have been slightly easier to learn, but either way, expect to spend quite a bit of time banging your head on your desk before you will be able to make Photoshop magic.

I'll say up front that I have never wiggled a cursor over an image in full Photoshop, but I'm now running Elements 2020 and it does more than I generally need to do. Unlike the 8.0 version I was running before I upgraded the whole computer system, the current clone tool will give a preview of the intended change which is a great help in positioning critical tweaks.

Kodachromeguy · Feb 18, 2022

DWThomas said:
If this is just a small personal project, Photoshop Elements may well be enough to get you through at less expense. Any such stuff has some learning curve to deal with.

But with Elements, you are restricted to 8-bit files for many of the operations. This will not be a problem with JPEG files, but what if you have 16 bit files of other formats?

DWThomas · Feb 18, 2022

Kodachromeguy said:
But with Elements, you are restricted to 8-bit files for many of the operations. This will not be a problem with JPEG files, but what if you have 16 bit files of other formats?

Enh, you raise a valid point, but for me that's not a particular concern (I'm a hobbyist ), I suppose it depends on what you're going to do with the results (or if you're trying to do paid work for somebody). Especially with damaged fifty year old negatives or prints, it would seem unlikely the extra bits would add much. In my typical uses, I doubt anything short of a side-by-side comparison of test images would show much difference. That said, my "exhibition work" is B&W darkroom printed, I seldom exhibit color prints. So most of my "other" stuff goes in a web gallery or shared on Facebook. (I mean, people like my mother in the 1970s were happy with 'disk' cameras! )

I also (so far) retain my scan files and raw files from digi-stuff hence could go back to the source if I had some reason. I suppose in a few more years Elements will go subscription, but for me the current one time buy for Elements is a winner. There are a number of other possible apps too, but I've not indulged.

Kodachromeguy · Feb 18, 2022

DWThomas said:
Enh, you raise a valid point, but for me that's not a particular concern (I'm a hobbyist ), I suppose it depends on what you're going to do with the results (or if you're trying to do paid work for somebody). Especially with damaged fifty year old negatives or prints, it would seem unlikely the extra bits would add much.

I will offer the alternative view:
1. A 50-year-old negative if scanned well still has a wealth of image data on it, just as much as (or very close to) a modern negative. So you are not lacking in data.
2. Scan it at 16-bit to extract as much data as you can from that negative.
3. If you are going to go to go to the trouble of using a heal tool to remove scratches or chemical blobs, do it to the full 16-but file. It takes the same amount of work, but you need a more powerful software than Elements.

Sirius Glass · Feb 18, 2022

GIMP GNU Image Manipulation Program gimp.org "GIMP is a free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image manipulation and image editing, free-form drawing, transcoding between different image file formats, and more specialized tasks. It is not designed to be used for drawing. GIMP is released under GPL-3.0-or-later license and is available for Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows."

runswithsizzers · Feb 18, 2022

Kodachromeguy said:
But with Elements, you are restricted to 8-bit files for many of the operations. This will not be a problem with JPEG files, but what if you have 16 bit files of other formats?

Kodachromeguy said:
I will offer the alternative view:
1. A 50-year-old negative if scanned well still has a wealth of image data on it, just as much as (or very close to) a modern negative. So you are not lacking in data.
2. Scan it at 16-bit to extract as much data as you can from that negative.
3. If you are going to go to go to the trouble of using a heal tool to remove scratches or chemical blobs, do it to the full 16-but file. It takes the same amount of work, but you need a more powerful software than Elements.

The OP does not mention negatives - only says "photos." IF negatives are available, then there may be some benefit to a 16-bit workflow. But my experience - which envolved collecting photos from relatives for a family history book - was that nobody had any negatives. If working with scans from prints, then advanced techniques for recovering highlights and shadows are unlikely to be needed.

I did often overscan my prints at 600 or 1200 dpi so I could do corrections on the higher pixel images before downsizing them to a more realistic resolution. That was sometimes helpful if I needed to work on repairing critical areas like around the eyes. Many of the old photos available to me were quite small, and I found that I could get away with leaving my finished images a little bit bigger than the originals. I can't say I ever got really good at restoration, but I was able to clean up most of the old photos well enough to make them present well in a modest size book.

Anaxagore · Feb 26, 2022

In addition to the above suggestions, I would add the Silverfast SRDx plugin that is rather good at fixing thin imperfections - small cracks, or dust snakes coming from the scan. It is not perfect, especially if you have multiple scales of imperfections - trying to mark a bigger one that has not been detected automatically will result in a blotch that does remove the white (or black) zone but does not blend well into the surroundings, and some scanning problems (dead pixel) will also somehow be worse after running the plugin.

Alan Edward Klein · Feb 26, 2022

Epsonscan software that works their scanners, has good restoration features. These include ICE which eliminates creases, cracks, and other blemishes. Not totally, but very well. You can finish up the rest in spot cloning features in your post-processing software. Epsonscan also has Color Correction which works very well for faded color on prints. This software operates on their V550 and V600 cheaper scanners. Of course, these scanners also scan film. Epson makes print scanners alone. I;m not familiar with them. But they could be cheaper and still have these restorative features for prints.

runswithsizzers · Feb 26, 2022

Alan Edward Klein said:
Epsonscan software that works their scanners, has good restoration features. These include ICE which eliminates creases, cracks, and other blemishes. Not totally, but very well. You can finish up the rest in spot cloning features in your post-processing software. Epsonscan also has Color Correction which works very well for faded color on prints. This software operates on their V550 and V600 cheaper scanners. Of course, these scanners also scan film. Epson makes print scanners alone. I;m not familiar with them. But they could be cheaper and still have these restorative features for prints.

I have an Epson V37 from about 2013. It's reflective, only. I am using the V37 with Epson Scan 2 software for Mac, v.6.4.94 which I downloaded from their website. That software does offer some tools for adjusting the tones of the image image, as well as color restoration and dust removal - but I could not find anything like a clone tool for selectively repairing damaged areas.

Alan Edward Klein · Feb 27, 2022

runswithsizzers said:
I have an Epson V37 from about 2013. It's reflective, only. I am using the V37 with Epson Scan 2 software for Mac, v.6.4.94 which I downloaded from their website. That software does offer some tools for adjusting the tones of the image image, as well as color restoration and dust removal - but I could not find anything like a clone tool for selectively repairing damaged areas.

I mentioned in my post, "You can finish up the rest in spot cloning features in your post-processing software." You're correct that it's not available in Epsonscan. Also, note that I'm referring to Epsonscan scanner software for Windows computers both of which I use. I'm not familiar with Epsonscan 2 which is used only for Apple computers.

Photo restoration software.

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