How to Retouch, Recover, and Restore Old Photographs

Retouching and restoration are the parts of the post-production process where an image is cleaned, corrected, and, in some cases, made usable again. In this learning guide you will learn how to remove unwanted dust, scratches, camera malfunctions, lens deficiencies, exposure problems, and more.

Posts in this series

Why Do We Restore Old Photographs?
In a broader context, we usually see photographs that have been preserved and restored from important moments in history. Hindsight's a wonderful thing, and...
Marie Gardiner
24 Jan 2017
Image Restoration
Historical Context, Contemporary Value: Old Photos as Cultural Documents
Why does knowing something about your archive photograph matter? Here we'll look at some of the reasons and how you can find out about your own archive images.
Marie Gardiner
28 Jan 2017
Image Restoration
How to Handle Archival Photos and Documents Properly
Printed photographs are, unfortunately, always degrading. The process of taking a film photograph is a chemical process. When you apply fixer, you slow the...
Marie Gardiner
7 Feb 2017
Archive
How to Digitise Archival Photographs
When you have archive images that you want to digitise, restore and organise, the best option is often to do all this yourself, without involving an external...
Marie Gardiner
17 Feb 2017
Image Restoration
How to Add Metadata to Archival Images
It's important to include metadata when you're managing photos. It means you can easily search for and find them as your archive grows and it means that you...
Marie Gardiner
21 Feb 2017
Metadata
Old Picture, New Life: Adobe Photoshop Photo Restoration and Retouching Basics
Need to clean up an old photo? This tutorial will show you the best way in Photoshop CS6, with an emphasis on restoration.
Marie Gardiner
12 Jan 2015
Image Restoration
How to Rescue Under-Exposed JPEG Images with Adobe Photoshop
Learn how to recover lost elements of an under-exposed JPEG using levels, curves and vibrance adjustment layers.
Marie Gardiner
27 May 2015
Image Correction
Photo Retouching in Adobe Photoshop with Content Aware in 60 Seconds
Since Adobe Photoshop CS5, we’ve had the tool Content-Aware, which can be used in various ways. I'll go through some of them now, in 60 seconds.
Marie Gardiner
14 Dec 2015
Retouching
3 (and a Half) Uses for Content Aware in Adobe Photoshop
Since CS5, Adobe Photoshop has included a tool called Content Aware. It’s been described as magical and a life-saver but what exactly is it and how can we...
Marie Gardiner
20 Jan 2015
Retouching
How to Save and Share Your Archive Images
Now you've started your digital archive, remember to back it up. Use Cloud storage or a separate hard drive stored in another location from the main PC to...
Marie Gardiner
1 Mar 2017
Image Restoration