Photo Restoration Basics

Restoring an old photograph is mostly about doing a few operations in the right order, on a good scan, without destroying the original.

Step 0: Scan Properly First

Everything downstream depends on this. Scan at 600 DPI (or higher for small prints), with auto-correction off, saved as TIFF or maximum-quality JPEG. Work on a copy; never overwrite the scan. If the photo is torn into pieces, scan the pieces together in position rather than trying to hold them.

Step 1: Global Tone and Colour

Fix the whole image before touching details, or you'll retouch details that later shift in colour.

• Set black and white points. Faded prints have compressed contrast — nothing is truly dark or truly light. Restoring the endpoints alone transforms most faded photos.
• Remove the colour cast. Old prints yellow or go magenta as dyes degrade at different rates. Neutralize by targeting something that should be grey or white — a shirt, a wall, paper.
• Consider going monochrome. If a colour photo's dyes have shifted beyond rescue, converting to black and white is an honest and often beautiful solution.

Step 2: Dust, Scratches and Spots

Now the small stuff, at 100% zoom, working systematically across the image rather than jumping around:

• Small specks and scratches — heal or clone from immediately adjacent, similar texture.
• Match grain. A perfectly smooth patch inside a grainy photograph is more visible than the original blemish. Some tools let you add matching noise afterwards.
• Don't over-clean. Photographic grain is not damage; smoothing it away makes a photo look plasticky and modern in a bad way.

Step 3: Tears and Missing Areas

• Tears crossing plain areas (sky, wall, clothing) are straightforward: clone from either side.
• Tears crossing faces or structure need patient patching from symmetric parts — the other eye, the other side of a collar — flipped and blended.
• Missing corners can be reconstructed from the surrounding pattern, or cropped away if they carry no content.
• Know when to stop. A large missing area over a face cannot be honestly reconstructed; inventing a face is fabrication, not restoration.

Step 4: Sharpening, Last

Sharpen only at the end, gently, and never on a scan that's already grainy — sharpening amplifies grain and any retouching seams. If the original is soft because of camera shake or focus, no sharpening will fix it.

On Colourizing

Adding colour to a black and white photograph is a creative interpretation, not a restoration: the colour information never existed. That's fine for family keepsakes and can be moving, but:

• Keep the original. Always archive the untouched monochrome master.
• Label colourized versions as such, especially for historical images.
• Be aware that AI colourization guesses — uniforms, flags and skin tones are frequently wrong in ways that matter.

Restoration ethics come down to one question: are you recovering what was there, or inventing what wasn't? Both can be legitimate; only one should be presented as the original.