Quick couple of tips for restoring sepia cracks or damaged photographs.
1.Make sure your computer has at least 8 gig of ram and 4 gig graphics, 2 gig graphics will suffice but can buffer.
2. When you scan from hard copy to digital, select the highest dpi available and store as jpeg.
3. Use PSP7 or Corel PSP, they handle large files without crashing and will warn you that your memory is insufficient without crashing.
4. Once you have your image loaded, go to image/resize and increase it to 500% of the original. If you don't have enough memory then select the largest you can make it without running out of memory. This makes repairs easier.
5. Use the retouch tools such as smudge, blur, push and soften etc with a small cursor. For example if you have a sepia with a crack across it then use the smudge tool to gently push from above and below the crack, gradually covering the crack with an average coating from nearby pixel formations. Don't try and do too much at once, nice and steady and save your work every ten minutes.
6. Finally use the soften tool from retouch to go over the smudging with a bigger curser then blend in.
7. When you've finished and you're satisfied, save it then go to image/resize and drop the size back to what it was before you enlarged it and save again. The whole point of enlarging is so you can work on it easier with finer tips or cursors.
8. Try a few prints and see how it goes. Practise makes perfect in all aspects of the work and take your time!
2. When you scan from hard copy to digital, select the highest dpi available and store as jpeg.
3. Use PSP7 or Corel PSP, they handle large files without crashing and will warn you that your memory is insufficient without crashing.
4. Once you have your image loaded, go to image/resize and increase it to 500% of the original. If you don't have enough memory then select the largest you can make it without running out of memory. This makes repairs easier.
5. Use the retouch tools such as smudge, blur, push and soften etc with a small cursor. For example if you have a sepia with a crack across it then use the smudge tool to gently push from above and below the crack, gradually covering the crack with an average coating from nearby pixel formations. Don't try and do too much at once, nice and steady and save your work every ten minutes.
6. Finally use the soften tool from retouch to go over the smudging with a bigger curser then blend in.
7. When you've finished and you're satisfied, save it then go to image/resize and drop the size back to what it was before you enlarged it and save again. The whole point of enlarging is so you can work on it easier with finer tips or cursors.
8. Try a few prints and see how it goes. Practise makes perfect in all aspects of the work and take your time!
Just as an example of what can be done with time and effort. The below picture was ripped into two across her face and was wrecked basically. A work colleague asked me to restore it and it took me about 40 hours to do it. When I handed him the result he shed a few tears so I never charged him a penny. I filled up myself.
