Saturday, September 12, 2009

Elements to Restore and Repair Old Photos

By David Peters

When we long for the past and to reconnect with better times we often look to our photographs to help us relive our cherished memories and remember loved ones who are no longer with us. Regrettably, while many things easily stand the test of time, photographs are not one of them. Due to the sun, water, dust, and other elements found in everyday life our photographs are prone to decay and it is vital to do what we can to keep them in their best state so that future generations can enjoy them as well.

Unfortunately many people have been faced with the question of what to do with photographs that are torn or have been ruined by moisture. Do you simply toss them in the trash and risk losing the memories they hold or do you spend loads of money to have the photo restored? Fortunately you don?t have to do either. You can use photo editing software to restore the photos to their original condition.

Since photos are on paper and Adobe Elements is a computer program how then will you manage to use the program to restore and repair your old photos? Well the answer is you have to convert your photos to a digital format. You do this by scanning your photos such that each photo can be saved as an image on the computer. Once you have scanned the photos you are just one step to restoring and repairing them.

After you have opened Adobe Elements you can go to file and open to retrieve the newly digitized photograph. I actually recommend you create a copy, by clicking on file and save as then renaming the photograph, so that you have a backup image on the off chance that you make a mistake. Now you can begin to edit them using a few of the tools available in Elements.

Now restoring your photos when using Adobe Elements is quite simple and it does not need any skilled training, all the tools in the elements software are very simple and easy to use. The most common tools you will use when restoring photos will be the smudge, blur and sharpen tool, these are the tools you definitely will need to get to grips with.

I want to give you a breakdown of each of the tools and tell you how you can use them to restore your photographs. Let?s start with the smudge tool. This tool is helpful when you want to eliminate any scratches or tears that are on the original photo. This tool can also be used to eliminate any objects in the background you wish to get rid of as well as correct photos that were not properly focused.

The next tool that you will use often is the blur tool. This tool lets you add tone to photos that were bleached by the sun. You are basically using this tool to make the photos darker and attempting to restore their original color and brightness.

The sharpen tool is the last, most commonly used tool in photo restoration. If any parts of the photo are blurred, whether it is in the original photo or from scanning it in, this tool will fix those bits.

Remember there is no photo too old to be fixed by Adobe Elements.

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