Reconditioning a Picture!

Kaybenson

Good afternoon all,

I have a picture which is somehow damaged. Is there a way i can get this reconditioned via a software or online?

Cheers

Kay

System

Damaged in what way? Is it a physical photo, a computer file?

Kaybenson

Tarambor wrote: »

Damaged in what way? Is it a physical photo, a computer file?

Physical photo.

I think water spilled into part of it.

Heedtheadvice

If you scan it into a computer file such as a jpeg type there are many a software packages (and some free) where you can potentially improve the visual look of photographs.
Results are usually limited in that although you can improve 'exposure'issuesbto a certain degree, replicate undamaged to damaged areas (if they match and are not too big to be obvious) and otherwise modify images you are unlikely to fix large damaged areas!

Then only way is to get advice from an expert who can see the photo or just download a free app and give it a go (on a copy of the scanned file). One of the easier ones to use is Photoscope (free) though there are some much better and more complicated to use.

Neil_Jones

I think your "feed this picture into some software and let it do stuff all on its own in two seconds" idea is a bit movie-esque. A proper restoration can take a long time.

I always remember somebody once asked me if they could blow a picture up. It was only 100px by 100px and they wanted to blow that up to a standard where it would look good on a sheet of A3. I said I can blow it up but contrary to what the movies will have you believe, it'll look crap and blocky. "It'll be fine" they said. So we did it and of course it looked like a blocky lump of crap. Cue disappointment. "Told you so," I said.

mart44

Restoring and colouring old photos was a major pastime for me a few years back. These processes can take a long time. Below is a WW1 photo that I did. It is possible to take all of the sepia out but having done the restoration in B/W, I thought it might be better with a degree of sepia. The photo was processed in Corel PhotoPaint (included in the Home & Student version of the CorelDraw Suite):

Heedtheadvice

Excellent job done there, Mart. You will have put in a lot of work to do that.

It was very fortunate too that (unless your post is just low resolution) that the restoration did not have a lot of detail so you could infill in the missing bits. For the OP it should be pointed out that the smaller size of missing bits are the easiest to doctor and the gig areas more problematic especially if they should have unique detailing them.

Nevertheless a great example of what can be done by changes by hand with software. Automatic as Neil says though it is not.

mart44

I shrunk the images down so they didn't look too big in the forum page but they are more detailed than that in the original larger size.

SteveJW

Dependant on what the picture is, I would consider looking for a forum / group that specialises in the subject
I'm a member of a family history forum and people fall over themselves to restore / repair related pitures

Good luck