My mother's side of the family has two Facebook groups where people occasionally share vintage pictures of family members. This photo popped up and I thought it would be fun to restore it and give it new life. Naturally, photos on facebook aren't typically very high resolution so the restoration process was already going to be an uphill battle. This, coupled with the damage that time has brought, made for an exciting but difficult challenge. Most of the photo was fairly simple to work with. Using the clone stamp tool and healing brush tool, I was able to remove most of the smaller blemishes, and add a little extra depth when needed. The hard parts were areas where cracks and folds had messed up important sections of peoples' faces. The father required some work on his mouth where a crack had removed one end of his lips. To fix this, I duplicated, reflected, and blended a copy of the other side of his mouth. I used a similar process to fix the middle child's eyes (my aunt Desta). Her eyes were significantly more difficult since the cracks did not leave much to work with. Overall, this was a fun, one night project to brighten the days of my quarantined (because this is being written during the Coronavirus Epidemic) family.
Family Photo Restoration: April 2020
I like looking at old photos that family shares on social media. Every once in a while, I see a damaged photo that I think would be fun and rewarding to restore in Photoshop.