Hello photo peeps,
I'm new to the entire world of photography and wanted some expert advice on restoring an old crusty picture. It's a photograph of my parents' marriage over 30 years ago. The picture is slightly partially torn, faded colors and just in general old.
Is there a professional service that can help restore it? I know it won't be 100%, which is ok.
I do a great deal of photo restoration and retouch and if you are attempting to do this yourself - here are some tips
If the pic is 8x10 or larger, scan at 300 dpi
For smaller pix, scan at 600 dpi
Many will tell you to scan all at 300 dpi but to do real clean work, you need the extra resolution even if it records the paper qualities.
If you use a proper scanner, save as tiff not jpg and depending on your scan software you can choose to do partial correction. In my case, I do no corrections with scanner software and go straight to Photoshop. If the image is monochrome, you can probably use other software that is cheaper - Pixelmator, Photoshop Elements etc as you wont need the bit difference that Photoshop proper offers.
Advanced work - I scan in color and at times can make more serious corrections for monochrome images by using the some color filtration(s) and more. You can read up on that as it can in fact make work easier and faster if you learn a few quick adjustments.
As others have said you have several tools that will do some really excellent fixes for healing, cloning and with the newer PS6, you can fill in missing areas by generating a delta of data from adjacent areas quite nicely.
Good luck