My Very First PhotoShop Tutorial

Separate from our everyday, 9-to-5 jobs, BFam and I have a side business of making memories. Sounds real snazzie, doesn’t it? What this means is if you, our client, have a big upcoming event – a relative’s birthday, an anniversary, or even (unfortunately) a death in the family you’d like to memorialize – we can take your photographs, your home movies, any historical footage, and turn it into a grand production set to music. It’s a small operation. It’s a family operation. We take pride in what we do, although it started out as a fluke. What was a favor to my company to create a fun little presentation for the office holiday party turned into a business. I hear that’s how most people get started in things – flukes.

I can’t tell you how many times I get packets of pictures I’m asked to scan for the production. Pictures that are really, really, really… really old. Really. Here’s a good example:



This picture was taken in the late 20′s – early 30′s, so we’re talking storage damage. Possible moves from boxes or homes or hands or scrapbooks. There’s no telling. This photo needs some love and tenderness. This is someone’s mother. Someone’s sister. Sometimes, in restoring a photo, you restore a lifetime without knowing it.

If you’re not familiar with PhotoShop, it’s this big, scary program from the Adobe suite that, with a little experience and experimentation, turns into the BFF you never knew you had. It’s also the type of program that you can never master no matter how much you think you have already. There’s always something new to learn. While that may seem scary, it’s a beautiful thing. Once you get to know PhotoShop and love it, it definitely loves you back. I’ll try to make this as painless as possible.

I’m working with PhotoShop CS2 (and, yes, I’m working from a PC… sorry Mac users. I’ll catch you on the next tutorial). The most current version is CS4, but CS2 works just as well for the tutorial.



The first thing you notice about this old photo is all the cracks. The second, the coloring. There’s been bending, dropping, tearing, spots, and it’s just an old photo so it’s yellow from oxidation. Were it not for the cracks, the best thing you could do for an old photo’s color is go to your Curves option (in your toolbar: Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves) and get rid of the yellowing (or use the path I have highlighted in the photo), then go to bed and just be done with the whole thing.

Once you select Curves, you don’t have to get fancy. Go right to the Auto option and…



…Voila! What yellow? Looks like a new photo already.



The next thing you’ll notice is our photo is a bit off-center. This is typical with scans. No matter how many times you align the photo with the glass, something goes askew by the time the lid is closed and the scan begins. So we want to crop those ugly black spaces left behind by the scanner. Now you have a clean(er) photo to work with.



Now we want to give some love to those ugly cracks and spots. The Spot Healing Brush Tool (highlighted) has always done a great job in rectifying this very issue.



But before I can use this tool, I have to marry the layer of my photo (shown as Background in the Layers queue) and the layer of the Curves option I used to take the yellowing away from my photo. If the layers are not merged, your Spot Healing Brush Tool will give you an error message telling you no way, no how, it ain’t gonna work. To merge layers, you can hold your Shift key, then left-click the layer called “Background” and the layer called “Curves” (highlighted). After your layers are selected, right-click your mouse and choose the option “Merge Layers” from the drop-down menu. Your Curve layer and Background layer should now only be one layer: Background.



Now that your background is A-OK, you’ll need to Zoom in on your photo (highlighted). Why would you need to Zoom? You’re not blind! Well, you’re about to do some major detailing work and, unless you want to go blind, you’d better get as close as possible to the affected area you’d like to fix. Trust me. I wear a stronger pair of prescription glasses because I thought I didn’t need to Zoom.



Zoom. I implore you. I beg of thee.

You’ve Zoomed. Perfect. Now you’re ready to use your Spot Healing Brush (that band-aid looking icon in your side toolbar). And you’re going to use it. A LOT. If there’s one thing I’ve learned with restoring old photos, it’s that you never really find all the dings and tears. There’s always something. Some slight imperfection.



I’ve also learned that the hardest detail to restore in old photos is faces. There are so many nuances to a face that, if you’re not careful, the Spot Healing Brush could turn on you and have your subject look more like a cyclops.





For faces, I like to use the Healing Brush Tool.



Once you select this tool, you want to change the size of your brush. Remember, this is detail work so you’re going super-duper small. But that shouldn’t be a problem because you’ve Zoomed, right?



Right?

Do I need to implore thee again?

The size you choose for your brush depends on the resolution of your photo. Lower resolution photos require larger numbered brushes. Higher resolutions mean smaller numbered brushes. I’m using a 4 pixel brush. That’s pretty teeny.

Now that your brush is the size of a grain of sand, you’re ready to use your Healing Brush Tool. Unlike the Spot Healing Brush Tool, you can’t just choose the option and start making corrections. For this tool, you’ll need to choose a spot extremely close to the area you’d like to correct. Once you find this spot, hold your Alt key and left-click that spot. You’ll know you did it right because your point, which was an arrow, will turn into a crosshair like this:



What this did was essentially give you a paint brush, and an option to decide which color you want to paint your canvass with. You’ve just loaded up your brush with paint. Now you want to take your brush (or cursor) and hold the left-click of your mouse, dragging the cursor over the affected area.



When you do this, you will notice your cursor turn into a hollow circle (figure 2). The area you chose to pull your color from is figure 1. If you move on to another area and want to continue using the Healing Brush Tool, remember to use the Alt + left-click option to grab paint from a new area. Otherwise, the color you pulled from figure 1 will stay loaded on your brush. Everytime you use the Alt + left-click option, it’s like washing your brush and dipping it into a new color.



I chose the small crack on the subject’s face as an example of the power the Healing Brush Tool can sway. Can’t see the difference?

How about now?

With more use over an extensive area…



Crazy, right?

You can continue to use this tool, toggling between it and the Spot Healing Brush Tool, until you’ve eradicated your photo of every crack, spot and blemish. It’s like an entirely different photo!

Now that we’ve covered detail, let’s talk finishing touches. (You can Zoom out now. It’s OK.)



We’ve used our Curve layer to erase the yellow, but we’re still looking a little… ashy. This photo needs some lotion. You could play around with the Contrast layers, but this is an old photo. Contrasts tend to backfire if increased, giving the impression of dark puncture holes everywhere. It’s not very attractive, and after all your hard work with those healing brushes, you don’t want to waste it on the wrong finish. For most black and whites of old photos, I’ve found the Burn tool works best.

I have an insane array of brushes I’ve downloaded over the years. I love them and use them when I’m feeling overly creative. PhotoShop has a standard package of brushes already pre-uploaded in their software. Find the brush that looks like a round orb that’s fading around the edges. (My brush is called “Airbrush”. Yours may be called something different.)



Take that brush and increase the size to some huge size you’re positive will cover the entire radius of your photo with one use. You don’t want to leave streaks in your photo. Using a smaller brush size will do just that.



With just a few sweeps of your very large brush, the dark areas of the photo begin to look more realistic. The white areas begin to pop and become more distinct.

After a few (OK, a lot) more rounds of alternating between use of the Spot Healing Brush Tool, the Healing Brush Tool and the Burn tool, you get the following results:



Not too shabby, eh?

With practice, patience, and a few nice words whispered softly to PhotoShop, you’ll be on your way to restoring a host of family albums and old photos you may have thought were unsalvageable.

Filed under etc2 · Tagged with photography