Fixing a faded photo

More often than not it's possible to fix a faded photo and produce a beautiful print, especially if the original photo is well taken with good details.

This faded old photo came up beautifully, with very little loss of detail and nice vibrant colours in the finished file.

Faded Photo Family Photo

Colour Restored and marks moved

How to Fix a Faded Photo

For those who wish to restore their own photos there are variety of different ways to tackle it. For the photo above I used levels & curves in Photoshop. This put some nice contrast back into the image. I then used a combination of HSL and a Color Balance layer to balance any tint to the image. To finish off the file I used the Heal and Spot Heal tool to remove any marks visible at print size.

The digital file looks good, but the print looks awesome!

Issues with Restoring Faded Photos

There are times when fading poses a problem. This is likely when:-

• Details are so faded there's nothing, or barely anything left of important details like face, eyes, hands etc

• There are multiple other isses with the same area of the photo (faded, torn, parts missing etc)

• On very old, textured paper.

• Any combination of the above ^

In these cases we may struggle to produce a 'clean' print or file. Restored faded areas will either exhibit digital grain or artifacts or require painting in - which is something we try to avoid for face detail etc.

If you have an extremely faded photo but you're unsure if it's workable or not then we'll happily do a free evaluation of the print for you and let you know what we can do.

Have a faded old photo you'd like restoring and reprinting?

Look no further, look HERE for full details (the order form is at the bottom) or give us a call on 07950774983. It's rare we can't either produce something with the 'wow' factor or save a badly damaged print to produce something more acceptable.