Restoring Old Photos With Affinity Photo



Correcting a red over-saturated photo using Photoshop can be either very easy, or very hard. For example, if you have a photo that is completely red rather than just a little bit over the top, then I think you would basically have to desaturate the photo and recolor it from scratch – now this, you don’t want to do.

Super easy way to restore colors in old Photos. Watch this Affinity Photo tutorial to learn a quick way to bring back colors in vintage photos. Improve composition. It is the beginning step during the editing procedure of all kinds of pictures. Jun 16, 2017 - Learn how to restore old photos in Affinity Photo. This tutorial is great for people that have pictures of old family members, and want to clean up the image.


The easy case though, when you have a photo that is only tinted an abnormal red, this is nice and easy to fix. There’s a few ways to do it, but in this tutorial we’re going to be using some adjustment layers, mostly the Channel Mixer adjustment layers. 😀

1. Open a Photo

Start by opening up a photo in Photoshop, you’ll probably want to find an older photo that has a color problem, if you don’t have one on the computer you could scan one in, or just use the photo that I’m using.

2. Channel Mixer Adjustment Layers

After opening your photo, make a ‘Channel Mixer adjustment layer’ by going to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Channel Mixer… under the Photoshop menus.

After clicking to create your adjustment layer, you’ll have to input some settings, in the below image you can see what I’ve used, but I recommend messing around with all of the settings to get a suitable color.

After adding in that one adjustment layer, I end up with this:

After adding just one adjustment layer it’s almost perfect already! I added one more Channel Mixer adjustment layer to my photo, and simply changed the Blue to +95 under the Blue Output Channel, this gave it a little more yellow, which I’m not actually sure was necessary.

2. Additional Adjustments

Even though the photo is much better than it was to begin with, I still want to add a few more adjustment layers to make it look a bit better. Start by adding a Selective Color adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Selective Color…) then use settings similar to mine:

Not much difference was made to my photo, but slight improvements at least. It mostly just gave it a little bit of brightness. Now, depending on how your photo is looking, you might not have to add anything more to it, or if the color is still terribly off you need to go back and try different settings/different adjustment layers.

I finished off by adding in a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer and also a Curves adjustment layer, to make it a little brighter, better-looking, etc. 😉

Well, that’s pretty much all my photo needed doing to it, how about yours? Hopefully I’ve helped. Just remember, you need to try different adjustment layers and mess with the settings to get the result you need.

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed the tutorial.

How to restore and repair old photos

Restoring old photos gives memories: long lost relatives, friends from school and photographs of memorable vacations decades ago constitute memories that are way too precious to be allowed to wither away.

1. Create a digital copy of pictures

Affinity Photo App

Make a good quality high resolution copy. There are two way to do that. The first method is to make a scanned copy. The second method involves making a high resolution RAW photograph.

2. Use photo editing software

Preferred tool for restoring old and worn out photos is Photoshop. Lightroom does not nearly offer the same flexibility as Photoshop. Adjust the white balance, repair color, brightness and contrast issues. Fix scratches. Make sure you work in a new blank layer and in any case, keep a backup of the original RAW photograph or a scanned copy.

The Spot Healing Brush tool gives the option to make quick fixes to areas of the photograph that may have been damaged due to passage of time. This tool can be used in content aware mode. It means when you brush over an area that is damaged, Photoshop automatically samples the nearby areas and patches over the affected area. This tool is ideal when you want to restore sections of the photograph that is completely destroyed.

Sometimes the tool may not work as expected. You will need to subtly go over the areas once more, sampling and retouching to ensure that the final result is acceptable. The Clone Stamp Tool allows you to do finer editing, especially for the areas where Spot Healing Brush tool is ineffective. The Patch Tool is a very useful too. It allows you to select patches of the photograph, even those which are right at the edge, and to blend a texture over it. Make sure you do it in the Content Aware mode.

The final touch up would be to decrease a bit of contrast. Contrast is not always necessary to be added when restoring old photograph.

3. If pictures need more complex repair and restoration

Restoring old photos with affinity photoshop

Restoring Old Photos With Affinity Photos

If pictures need more complex repair and restoration, or you'd like to colorize the black and white images you may need help of professional photo retouchers. Their services are not very expensive but result may be very impressive. It's really wide range of enhancements which can be done with old photos and vintage images to make them look renewed: remove scratches and damages, clean up, enlarge and sharpen, recolor and refurbish and so on. And all these restoration works can be done online. Just use Phowd to find best retouchers all over the world and they will be happy to make this editing for you.

With Phowd you can get old photo restoration in just a few easy steps!


Restoring Old Photos With Affinity Photographer

4. Download your renewed old photos

How To Restore Old Photos In Affinity

Finally you have to download your renewed old photos and check if everything is done: all fixes are made, all damages and scratches removed and all colorization is correct.