My preferred photo editor is PaintShopPro. I’ve been using it since it was shareware and I regularly recommend it to anyone wanting a professional-grade program. I have only one reservation: Adobe’s Photoshop and it’s cut-down versions are so deeply entrenched that Photoshop tutorials are everywhere, making it very easy to find solutions to editing problems, take courses in editing photos or illustration methods if you own an Adobe product. PaintShop has plenty of tutorial support, too, but you have to search for it! Oddly, one of PaintShop’s problems is its low price. It is priced below Photoshop Elements and is as easy to use, so nit is usually thought of as an alternative to it; but in terms of power, it should really be compared with Adobe’s $1800 CS powerhouse. In this Intel, I am going to use PaintShopPro Photo X2 techniques to repair a faded, damaged print, or a mould-damaged 35mm colour slide. It is relatively easy if you have a little patience, and it’s a really worthwhile exercise: when you resurrect those aging photos, you are reclaiming precious memories and family history.
Workflow - A systematic approach to editing is always worthwhile. You can perform most procedures in any order, but some ways are better. For instance, you could remove stains and tears from an image, then straighten or crop it, only to find that you had spent 10 minutes fixing parts of the photo which you have discarded. Worse, sharpening the picture early in the process will degrade the image; adding contrast after sharpening will make matters worse.
The order which I recommend in these notes may not be the way everyone would approach the task, but it is efficient and will not in itself degrade the original. Once mastered, you can apply them in the same sequence with confidence to a range of projects.
Which brings us to the prime directive: never work with the original! Whatever else you do, make a copy and make your changes on that. PaintShop can undo an unlimited number of edits, but you should still have an unaltered copy in a safe place.
Here are the steps:
1. Getting the Image into the Computer - You want to start with the best image you can, whether a scan or a digital photo. We will deal with scanning techniques and file formats first.
2 Straighten and Crop - Make sure the image is straight, and crop out any portion you are not going to keep - like borders or unwanted background. It is a waste of memory, disk space and time to work on areas that are going to be discarded, and their intensity or tone can trick the software when adjusting contrast, lightness etc.
3. Duplicate the Background Layer - This is your original image and not to be worked on.
4. Fix Major Damage - tears and stains first, using selection tools, duplicate layers, blemish, scratch and clone tools
5. Repair Remaining Flaws - soften, makeover and clone tool
6. Adjust Image - fade, contrast, noise and sharpness
1. Getting the Image - The traditional starting point for image restoration was to make a “copy negative” by photographing the original. With digital technology, this is still a viable approach. Using the techniques described in my Intel on “Photographing Art”, make a copy and save it to a file.
The kind of file you save to is important. You can never add more picture detail than was in the original photo, but you can certainly lose information by saving the image to a file that uses “lossy” compression to reduce disk space. Jpeg images do just this, so use either RAW or Tagged Image Format. PaintshopPro imports and works with all current RAW formats, and can also work with 14 bit tif files. Either of these is suitable for the work we are going to do. However, once you start editing, save the working image in PSP’s own image format. This will preserve all your edits and layers should you want to revisit the work at any future time.
Scanning Photos - Scanning at a minimum of 300 dpi will produce files of sufficient size for good results. If your computer has the capacity to work with larger images, by all means scan at a higher resolution: PaintShop is capable of handling huge files without slowing down... unless you are short of memory and disk space.
Again, scan to a lossless format if possible. If necessary, you can scan the document as a psd file (Adobe Reader format).
Don’t add problems during the scanning process: check your photos for dirt, dust etc. and if necessary, gently clean them with a soft brush, blower brush or lint-free cloth.
Clean your scanner glass, removing lint, fingerprints or smudges, using a micro fibre cloth or a lint-free cloth with a glass cleaner (spray it on the cloth, not on the scanner). Wash your hands, and, ideally, wear clean white cotton gloves (available from pharmacies and some photo stores) so oils from your hands don’t contaminate the scanner or photographs.
Even when you are restoring a mono photo, make both a colour and a black and white copy. Depending on the image, there are times when one version will provide a better result than the other. Usually the colour scan of a monochrome will be the best, but not always.
A lot of scanners preview images before you scan. Crop the previewed image to include only the original photo, getting rid of borders, but keeping all the actual photo. You can crop out parts you don’t want from the scanned file, but you should keep all the original image for future use.
Many scanners offer dust and scratch removal and other editing features. I don’t recommend using them. PaintShopPro offers much more control and you will not risk abandoning data you might later need.
If you have a colour slide or a negative to edit, the procedure is the same, but you will need a scanner with either a slide copier or an accessory slide attachment. Do not try to repair fungus damage (a typical problem with old slides, even when stored properly - fungi like to eat the gelatine); do all your repairs in the computer and send the slides away to an expert to stop further deterioration if you want to.
Editing the Photo - However you have PaintShop set up, there are several pallets that you should have docked on the right of your image space. From the View Menu, select Palettes, and then choose the Tool Options, Layer, and Overview palettes. I also like to have the History Palette on screen.
Preliminary Steps - Straighten the slide using the standard Straighten. Then crop any unwanted parts of the picture and save as a PSP image. I suggest you name the file in such a way that you know it is “under repair”. If the original was a colour or B&W negative, Use the Image Menu to convert it to a reverse it (Image/Negative Image).
Make a Duplicate - In the Layers Palette Right-click beside the thumbnail and select Duplicate Layer, or choose Layers/Duplicate from the Menu. This new layer is called Copy of Background. To help identify the layer, and keep your work organised, double-click the new layer in the Layer palette, and type “Corrections” in the Name field ( you can call it whatever you want, but since we are going to make all of the corrections on this layer...). Later, when the edits are completed, we'll merge all the new layers with the original background layer.
Major Repairs - Start with the edges. It is very common for the outer edges to be torn. Set the zoom level to “full page”. If there is minor damage, you could use the clone brush to repair it; but consider instead copying and pasting from a less damaged edge. For this you would use the Selection tool. Use the Rectangle selection tool set to Replace (that’s the default setting) and 0 Feather. Tick the Anti-alias box (to give a smoother selection) and draw a rectangle over the longest section of undamaged picture edge. Press Ctrl-F (or Selection/Float) and you can now move the selection around the screen (if you don’t float it, you will leave a blank patch behind).
Now choose the Pick Tool and the selection acquires handles and a rotate bar. Drag it over the damaged section, rotate and stretch it until it completely covers the damaged section, and de-select (Select/None). If there are other parts of the edge to fix, before deselecting, you can defloat the selection (Select/Defloat or Ctrl-Shift-F),reposition the selection and resize to cover the next section. Each time you defloat, the selection is pasted over the image section.
If there is still work to be done on an edge, zoom to about 150 percent. You can zoom in by rotating the mouse wheel or by using the View Menu or the Zoom+/Zoom- icons.
Choose the Clone Brush from the Tools toolbar and use the Options palette to set a suitable size and shape. Round Size 10, Hardness of 50, Step 1 and Opacity of 100% works well for most situations. Leave the Blend Mode set to Normal and mark the Aligned Mode check box.
Change the Thickness and Rotation so that the brush is a similar shape to the area you want to repair. If you make a mistake just press the Undo button (the curved arrow on the tool bar), or press Ctrl+Z, and then start over. Undoing like this takes you back to the last time you lifted your finger off the mouse button, so make only small repairs at a time and you won’t have to redo large sections if you make a slip!
Instead of the Clone Brush, you can use the Scratch Remover or the Object Remover, which share the same Tool Palette position as the Clove Brush under the Drop Arrow. They work extra well on very large areas.
If you use the Clone, select the source pixels from as close to the part to be repaired as you can, and make many little repairs, selecting from slightly different positions each time, This will make it much harder to see your repair afterwards.
Now apply the same techniques to other tears and long flaws in the image. As you repair, switch back and forth between the Clone tools and the Soften Brush, which helps to hide your repairs.
If you have areas of repeating pattern or other that are hard to match. you can fix them with a clever use of the Eraser Tool. Click on the Background Layer and make another Duplicate Layer between the Background and the Corrections layers. Label it “Patch”.
Next, select the Corrections Layer and with the Eraser Tool set to a size just wide enough for the area you want to repair, and a Feather of about 3, erase the damaged part. Your image should not look any different, because you can see the same part of the picture showing through from the layer below.
Change to the Pick Tool and select the Patch Layer. With the Pick Tool, move the Patch layer. You will see different parts of the image appear through the “hole” you erased in the top layer; when a close match appears, rotate or skew the Patch layer until the best match is achieved. Then merge the Patch and Corrections layers (right-click the Corrections Layer and select Merge Down or use the menu (Layer/Merge/Merge Down). Merge Down merges one layer with the one immediately below it.
Repair Remaining Damage - With the major damage fixed, Change to the Makeover Tool and choose the Blemish Remover. This is designed to remove imperfections in skin: blackheads, moles, pimple and the like; it works a treat on any flaw!
Set the size so that the centre circle covers the flaw and click once: fixed! repeat on dust, blemishes, stains or any imperfection. The inner circle “paints out” the flaw with a blend averaged from the area in the outer circle. The only time you may have trouble is if the outer circle picks up an odd tint, in which case just Undo (Ctrl+Z or Edit/Undo or use the History Palette or the reverse arrow) and fix it with the clone brush.
Adjust the Whole Image - fade, contrast, noise and sharpness. With the image repaired, it is time to return it to its former glory. This stage is left to last because we didn’t want to apply the balance, saturation and other corrections to the faults, or have the computer include these area in its computations.
Start with the Adjustment Menu and select Add Remove Noise/Salt and Pepper or Small Scratch filter, depending on your image. If needed run a smoothing filter (Adjust/Add Remove Noise/Edge Preserving Smooth. use the default values.
When you are happy with this, go to Smart Photo Fix and tick the Preview on Image and the Advanced check boxes. Use the Dropper Tool to select areas that should be white, black and grey (or any one of these) and then use the More black and More White sliders to adjust the white balance if necessary. Adjust the Brightness, Highlight, Shadow, Colour (Saturation) and Sharpness Sliders until the image is correct, then select O.K.
Your picture is now restored. To compare it with the original (still there in the Background Layer) just click the Eye next to the Corrections Layer. That makes the layer invisible, but doesn’t change it in any way. When you are ready to admire your handiwork again, click the Eye again.
If you want to tweak any aspect, the controls under the Adjustment and other Menus, will let you add further refinements or effects, but at this stage you should save your psp image and then save again as a tif image. You might want to save it as a jpeg also, if you want to use it with a web site or application that only accepts that format. You should, however, archive the psp image in its native format. Saving to formats that do not support Layers will pop up a warning message. That’s OK, because you will also have the .pspimage file.
It takes a lot longer to describe this procedure than to do it; find an old photo and have a try.
