Summary

This chapter looked at ways to repair photographs that need help. When you have old, cracked, torn, or faded pictures, you can use a variety of Photoshop tools to cover up the imperfections and restore the image. The Eyedropper tool enables you to select a color or gray tone and apply it with any of your Painting tools. The Clone Stamp clones a selected piece of the picture and places it wherever you want it, as much or as little as needed to cover a crack, fill in an empty space, or cover objects you want to hide. The Healing Brush and Patch tools copy the characteristics of a selection and transfer them to another, maintaining the same lighting, texture, and so on. The Patch tool selects an area with a lasso, whereas the Healing Brush works with brush shapes.

Tinting old photos can be managed in any of several ways. Toning can be applied by colorizing or by turning the picture into a duotone, tritone, or quadtone. Hand-tinting can give you a different “old” picture look. Vignetting adds to the old look.