After I have successfully taken the images of Bills that I realised that the setup could be used in other ways. My wife had some old family photos that were not in the best conditions and so I decided to see whether I could improve them, and surprise her with a restored image.

Considering that the original image was taken in the 1920’s it was not in too bad of shape. Having said that it was discoloured and there were a number of scratches across it. The worst part was on the left of the image with water damage at the top and the pocket was missing on the boy on the very left of the picture.

I brought the image into Lightroom and applied some general adjustments (above) before taking it into Photoshop starting with a curves adjustment to boost the overall contrast (below).

Once I had the overall look how I wanted it it was now time to fix various problems with the image. I used a number of layers so that I could isolate each major issue. The Spot Healing Brush was excellent to deal with the small issues while the Clone Stamp and Brush were used for the larger areas.

Once I was happy with all of the fixes I then sharpened the image and them adjusted the exposure on the white dress in front as it was still a little blown out.

The final adjustment was to apply a Black & White layer to the image as I wanted to remove the Sepia tone. I then got the image printed before presenting it to my wife.

She was thrilled with the result. Of course she then said that I could tackle some of the other older images.