Restoring an old photo

I remember seeing some of my old photos from kindergarten and junior high school that had scratches, stains, tears, and wear. For years, I wanted to restore them but didn’t have the skillset or knowledge of how to go about doing so. As I learned about and gained more experience with image editing, I was able to restore them to near-perfect condition.

Another photo I was proud of restoring was one of my now late grandmother’s mother on my late father’s side. It was a small black and white 5” x 7” photo that had a lot of scratches and spots and also some distortion that I was able to clean up and enlarge to a 16” x 20” photo of my grandmother’s mother. It was extremely gratifying to see the look of satisfaction on my grandmother’s face when she saw the resulting photo that I proudly hung up in her front room.

Let’s look at one of many approaches to restoring an old photo, beginning with...