Tutorial #15 - Repairing Photographs

1. Before you begin the tutorial it may be an idea to have one of your own photographs scanned into Photoshop.
   
   
2. The first thing needed to be done before adding colour to the photograph is repair the tears and stains.
   
   
3. Create a new layer and select the clone tool with a soft brush. Adjust the opacity of the brush to about 50%.
   
   
4. Activate the Use All Layers option, and carefully clone over the damaged areas, remembering to reset the source frequently to avoid repetitive patterns.
   
   
5. With my image, instead of creating myself more work with the background, I drew a selection around the main subject and created a new layer. A gradient fill (greys) was added and then some noise and blur. This made the background fit in with the photograph. With all repairs done, flatten the image. Now for the colour.
   
   
6. Unfortunately, when you are colourising old black & white photographs you have to guess the colours. I was lucky in this case. All I need to do was make sure I got the right colours for the RAF uniform, and work out the skin colouring. Be careful when adding colour - if you don't get it right, you may just upset somebody!
   
   
7. There are a couple of ways to add colour to black & white images: Variations, Hue & Saturation set to Colourise, the paintbrush set with a lower opacity. In my example I used the Variations command.
   
   
8. First, draw a selection around the main parts of the uniform and then save the selection in case you need it later. From the Image menu select Image... Adjust... Variation. What you should see next is a large dialogue box with various versions of the uniform. Using the colours provided, mix the colour until you reach the shade you want.
   
   
9. All you need to do now is repeat the above process of drawing selection masks and using the Variations command. It's really as simple as that.