Restoring old photos

nervousftb_3

Hi all,

Hope this is in the right place!

My grandma has recently passed away, and upon clearing her house we have come across a massive collection of very old photos (some date back to the 1880's!). Obviously they are not all in perfect condition, so I am looking for a relatively cheap way of restoring them. So, I need advice for 2 different issues:

1) Can I send the original photos away somewhere to be professionally restored, and is it worth it? This would only apply to one or two of the photos with worst damage (folds/scratches) that I would like to frame.

2) Is there any cheap/free software available so that I can scan the pics into my PC and restore them digitally?
I have been trying to do this using Google Picasa, but it is a bit limited and some of the photos need quite a lot of work.

Thanks very much

Sirbendy

not sure on point 1.

Point 2 - a decent flatbed scanner and something free like paint.net or GIMP would do it.

I'm doing similar..

Here's a before:
http://sirbendy.jemjabella.co.uk/images/fampics/really%20old%20photos/Image9.jpg

There's the after:
http://sirbendy.jemjabella.co.uk/images/fampics/really%20old%20photos/old%20pic,%20repaired.jpg

macman

Photoshop Elements is probably the best commercial program to do this on.

Quaint1

If you can find a copy of Photoshop with the Healing Brush tool (from version 7 onwards), a little practise can bring great results - I've not used Photoshop Elements but the tool may be in there.
Best thing to do is to scan at the best resolution your scanner and computer can cope with without causing memory issues, then back it up somewhere so that you are only working on copies and not the original scans.
Au Res.,
Paul

BillTrac

Nervousftb,

lucky you.

Might be a good time to see if there are any Photoshop courses at your local college/uni

I did one a couple years ago on Saturday mornings. It was free and was actually an excellent course

ian_w_4

Check your private messages

1) Yes, details pm'd

2) As sirbendy suggests GIMP is probably the best free Photoshop substitute. Aviary.com is an online image editor which works pretty well too (down when I just checked but should be up again soon).