How to restore old photos with photoshop quickly

1. Restore old photos using the Photo Restoration tool 

To restore old photos with Photoshop as quickly as possible, you should use Photoshop 2023. The following example is done with a photo taken with a low-resolution film camera, making the subject's face unclear. 

With the old version of Photoshop, we cannot restore the face, we can only sharpen or reduce noise. Everything is different when it comes to Photoshop 2023. To start, click Filter => Neural Filters => go to Photo Restoration, this is the feature to restore old photos in Photoshop.

Click on the cloud then select Download to download Photo Restoration to your computer, make sure your computer is connected to the internet. Photo Restoration uses Adobe's artificial intelligence so it will be quite heavy to download.

Once installed, slide the Photo Restoration switch to the right. The first feature is Photo Enhancement, which restores the entire photo. Accordingly, Photoshop will increase sharpness, contrast and reduce noise. With just one simple operation, the photo will have good contrast and less noise.

Drag the Photo Enhancement slider back and forth to select the appropriate parameters for the photo, however, the face is still quite blurry, to be clearer, use the Enhance Face feature in Photo Restoration to restore the face. 

Drag the Enhance Face slider to the right and then wait for Photoshop to use AI to restore the face. Although the original photo had everything on the face very blurry, after using Enhance Face the face was much clearer.

Photoshop can help restore the face very naturally, it can be seen that restoring old photos with Photo Restoration is extremely effective with results that surprise us and amaze us with the authenticity of every detail.

Photos taken with film cameras or scanned from old films often have scratches and mold. Usually, we will use the Healing Brush to remove these scratches. But now we can do this automatically with Photo Restoration.

Drag the Scratch Reduction slider to the right and Photoshop will immediately remove scratches and mold from old photos. Sometimes Photoshop mistakes scratches for white details, so use the Smart Filter and a black Brush to help restore these details.

Film photography is often noisy due to low light or poor film and lens quality. Drag the Noise Reduction slider to the right to reduce noise. This will help smooth out your photos.

Photos taken with film cameras often have color noise, so the color pixels will not be accurate even in well-lit environments. This is a limitation of film and old technology. To help photos have better quality, drag the Color Noise Reduction slider to the right to help Photoshop process the wrong color pixels.

Normally, we will use JPG format to scan the image before uploading it to the computer. The image quality depends a lot on the scanner, image format, and compression level. Sometimes, Artifacts will occur. In this case, drag the JPEG Artifacts Reduction slider to the right to help improve the image quality. 

Next, select Output => Smart Filter => OK, then return to Photoshop to sharpen and adjust the color of the image. 

Old photos are often out of focus and blurry due to the shooting speed. In addition, the limited focus and lens techniques make it difficult for the photo to be as sharp as a DSLR. To fix this problem, select Filter => Sharpen => Smart Sharpen to sharpen the photo => select the cause of the blurry photo. 

If the focus is not correct, choose Gaussian Blur, and if the lens is of low quality, choose Lens Blur. Besides, you can choose Motion Blur for cases of handshake or with moving subjects.

After selecting the following cause, increase Amount to restore sharpness. Adjust Shadows to control sharpness in shadow areas. In addition, control sharpness in bright areas with Highlights. 

Old photos often have incorrect colors due to technical limitations, besides, the film will change color after many years of storage or because the paper is aging. It is difficult to determine the color of old photos after many years. To get the natural color of the photo, select Image => Auto Color or use the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + E to help Photoshop automatically analyze and adjust the color.

Restoring a face is not easy, but Photoshop has done it wonderfully. Try the Photo Restoration feature right away, you will definitely be surprised with this tool from Adobe. 

2. Restore old photos with Photoshop CS6 

with the method of restoring old photos using Photoshop CS6, we will restore an old black and white photo with many wrinkles, color loss,... The steps are as follows:

Step 1: With heavily crumpled images, we need to process this first to return them to their original state by selecting the Spot Healing Brush Tool.

Step 2: Once you have selected the Spot Healing Brush Tool, right-click to open the parameters panel, set the brush size appropriately in the Size section.

Step 3: Click on the wrinkled, missing image areas to help the software automatically restore the image by the image patches around that area. You should choose the Brush size equal to the wrinkled line, do not leave the Brush size too large because they will be very messy.

Step 4: Because the right half of the image has lost a lot of detail, we copy the left side with the Selection Tool (M) => select an area around the left side of the face => press Ctrl + J to duplicate the selection into a new Layer => select the newly created new Layer and press Ctrl + T to open Free Transform. Flip the image by right-clicking on the image content => select Flip Horizontal => move the newly created image to the area that needs to be replaced, reduce the Opacity to align it more easily with the original content => when you're done aligning, set the Opacity to 100% as before.

Step 5: Create a Layer Mask for the newly restored right side of the face to make editing more effective. 

Step 6: Select the Brush Tool to erase unnecessary areas on the restored right half of the face.

Step 7: Erase the unnecessary parts of the right half of the face to make it more realistic.

Step 8: Reduce noise to make the image sharper by selecting Filter => Noise => Reduce Noise…

Step 9: Select Filter => Sharpen => Unsharp Mask… to increase the sharpness of the image and you're done. 

3. Restore black and white photos to color using Photoshop

To restore a black and white photo to a color photo, first, you need to click Filter => select Neural Filters => move Photo Restoration and slide the switch to the right => adjust Photo Enhancement to the right to help restore the overall look of the photo. You will see more contrast and detail.

Drag the Enhance Face slider to the right in combination with the scratch removal and noise reduction features to help restore old photos better.

In Neural Filters => select Colorize => download Colorize to your computer. Note that your computer needs to be connected to the internet. 

Once you have installed Colorize, slide the switch to the right to help Photoshop convert black and white photos into color photos. You can see that Photoshop works very quickly and naturally. If you feel the color is not suitable, click on Profile to choose another color.

Next, adjust the sliders to find the right color for your photo. If this step used to be very time-consuming and required a lot of experience, now we can do it in just 1 minute.

Once you have restored the sharpness, contrast and color of your old photos, combine it with the JPEG Artifacts Removal feature to improve the quality of your photos. You can use Depth Blur to blur the background, Smart Portrait to help smooth skin. You can increase the resolution of JPG photos with Lightroom.

Above are 3 ways to restore old photos with Photoshop, the simplest and easiest. Hope you choose the right method to apply. If you want to buy the latest Photoshop copyright, please contact Sadesign immediately for advice and installation at the best service price.