How to Restore Photos with Adobe Photoshop CS2

Photographs tend to yellow with time. And after you have had your pictures long enough for them to yellow, it is quite possible that some of them have also been damaged. Photograph restoration can be expensive. But it is something that you can do yourself, at least to a certain degree. So, how do you restore photos?

The first step is to get your photo scanned onto the computer. When scanning, make sure the scanner is set to scan photos at the highest dpi so it has the best picture quality. Once the photo is scanned, open the picture in Adobe Photoshop CS2. Using Photoshop can be a bit intimidating at first because it has many great tools to help you restore your photos. But knowing how to use some of the most popular features in Adobe Photoshop CS will help you become more comfortable with the program.

Auto Levels. This feature is located under Image --> Adjustments. This is a great tool that adjusts the color and the contrast of the picture. It also removes the yellow tint if there is one. I've seen this tool make some of my baby pictures look better than I ever remember them looking. If you want to adjust the color, but not the contrast, there are tools in this same category for that.

Spot Healing Brush Tool. This tool is located on the menu that appears on the side of the screen. The spot healing brush tool lets you select a small section of the photo to be healed. Then it will attempt to heal the damage to the photo. Most of the time this tool works great, but sometimes it takes a few tries to get it right. I generally use this tool to remove stains on a photo.

Dust and Scratches. This feature is located on the top menu under Filter --> Noise. It removes small scratches and those annoying dust spots. I used this tool on a picture that had been scratched up due to having been in storage and not in a photo album. It worked really well. But sometimes, it can make the picture a little blurry. To fix this, use the sharpen tool mentioned below.

Sharpen. This tool is located on the top menu under Filter --> Sharpen. Sharpen is a great tool to use after you've used other photo restoring tools that may have caused the picture to be slightly blurry (such as the dust and scratches feature).