I’ve been scanning in old photos from the family album recently. Most of which I’m going to leave alone, but some need a little help, restoring them to what you would expect. I’m also learning more about Adobe’s Lightroom in the process.

Rather than go into Photoshop or clone and stamp all over the image, I managed to make most of the improvements purely through manipulation of the HSL levels or Hue, Saturation and Luminance of the colours. I also used a touch of Noise Reduction with some Grain added to return it to that film look.

The example above could be taken much further, using frequency separation for example to correct the blemishes, but I think I’m going to leave it whith a few flaws so it doesn’t look out of place with the majority of unrestored images.

If you need help with any old photos of your own, feel free to contact me.