Develop module Advice on cleaning water damaged photo?

[TimWatts]

Lightroom Version Number

8.0

Operating System

1. macOS 10.13 High Sierra

Hi,

I'm hoping one of you seasoned gurus might have some advice for a rookie LR/PS user

Not sure if here or the PS group would be best. I've got a box of damaged prints. This is a typical example of my Grandad and Grandma. Most of the key features are clean, but I've been trying (and failing) to get a technique for covering up the damaged parts. I tried a healing brush in LR Classic but it struggles with such large areas. Obviously I can soften/blur the image slightly, but not enough to take out the damage.

I've seen some far more knackered photos with creases, water damage, stains restored to a very clean final - so I must be missing some tricks.

Any tips (just technique names that I can google would be very useful) would be very gratefully received

Kind regards, Tim

 

[Chris Wimlett]

I'd have thought this was a job for Photoshop, especially the Clone Stamp tool which I use a lot. "Photoshop CC Classroom in a Book (2018 Edition)" has a good tutorial on restoring a damaged photograph and uses the following tools:-

• the Spot Healing Brush tool to repair parts of the image.
• the content-aware Patch tool to remove or replace objects.
• the Clone Stamp tool to touch up areas.

Chris

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Yes, this is definitly a job for Photoshop. Start with the ‘Dust & Scratches’ filter. You may find that this filter can clean up most of the small the damage. Then use tools like clone, heal, patch to clean up the rest.

 

[TimWatts]

Awesome - thank you Johan and Chris. I shall have to bite the bullet and get some PS skills Your starting points are really helpful - I can't wait to try the dust and scratches filter later today - followed by the other suggestions.

 

[TimWatts]

PS - Very impressed with the Brother MFC-L8690CDW printer/scanner I got the other week with a cashback offer. For an MFC machine, the scanning is the best I've come across (those photos were scanned on it).

 

[Chris Wimlett]

Another thing to look as is to use PS layers for healing as this allows you experiment and undo things more easily. Just make sure that Sample All Layers is selected.

Chris

 

[BarrySchwartz]

All the advice you've been given is great - I've done a lot of this. I would suggest scanning at a high resolution - at least 600 ppi, and it would not hurt to go higher - I've scanned at 1000 ppi and more - it just gives you more leeway, both with prints and negatives and slides. Reprinting, of course, you'll want to go back to a saner 300 ppi. I'd also add that it's a good idea to work on a copy, keeping the original as-is. You never know how good your skills might become and you may want to go back and start again (you get faster with practice, so it's less painful), and just in general principal, it's safer to keep the original as it is, and better archival practice.