When you start to become involved in digital imaging it won’t be long before you get asked to restore an old family picture and this is a great way to learn the techniques. Not only do you learn as you go, but you end up with a picture that can give a lot of pleasure to members of your family. You will be able to amaze them with your skills, but then of course you will get asked to do more and more.

Call up the image and you will see that the picture has not aged well, but then it is close to 60 years old.

Step 1. The first stage is to put back some contrast into the picture via the levels command so call up the palette via the shortcut keys Ctrl+L. This is one of those images where the auto button does not do a bad job, but it does darken the uniform a little too much. After hitting the auto button move the centre slider a little to the left to lighten the image a little as shown below.

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Step 2. This image has a plain background and rather than spending lots of time trying to repair the original, you may find it better to replace it completely. Before you start call up the layers palette via the F7 key and rename the default background layer by double clicking the thumbnail. Photoshop cannot make a transparency of this default layer so renaming it is an important step. Choose the pen tool from the tool bar and with your picture greatly enlarged you can mark a path around the area you wish to remove. As you touch down with your cursor around the edge of the subject the path is started and you can proceed around the shapes in small steps. Every time you touch down Photoshop will leave a marker. These steps can be larger on straight edges and smaller around curves.

Once you have marked your path around the area you wish to discard you need to convert that path to a selection. Choose the path palette from the windows menu and drag the work path thumbnail down over the dotted circle icon at the bottom of the palette and Photoshop will create your selection as detailed below.

Feather the edge of your selection by 1-2 pixels before cutting out the unwanted detail via the shortcut keys Ctrl+X. The feather command is found in the select menu or via Alt+Ctrl+D.

You should now have your portrait floating on a transparent background, which will allow you to place a new one beneath him.

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Step 3. You may have noticed that at this stage there is a little too much green in the portrait. You will often find that you have to think on your feet and adjust as you go along and this is one of those times. To get the uniform back to a dark blue colour click back to the portrait and select just the face with the freehand lasso tool. Inverse that selection via the shortcut keys Ctrl+Shift+I and feather the edge of the selection by 3-5 pixels. You now have just the uniform selected and any changes you make will not affect the face.

Call up the hue and saturation palette via the shortcut keys Ctrl+U and tick the colorize box. Dial in 214 hue and 10 saturation. You will see that this manipulation shown below will return the uniform to a much more acceptable colour.

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Step 4. Create a new blank layer by clicking the centre icon at the base of the layers palette and drag that beneath the portrait.

Using the eye dropper tool shown above, sample a blue colour from the uniform and flood the bottom layer with your colour. Alt+Del will flood any layer with your foreground colour. Add 3-6 pixels of monochrome noise from the filter menu to your background colour. Computer generated colour can look odd when used with a photographic image, especially when printed. A few pixels of noise will make the background far more natural and acceptable to the eye.

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Step 5. Using the clone tool you can carefully clone out the scratches and blemishes in the picture. Choose a clone source close by the area you want to cover. Holding the Alt key allows you to sample an area and the best technique is to use the clone tool in small dabs rather than a painting type motion.

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Step 6. To deal with the light area at the bottom right is a little more difficult, but with care the clone tool is all you need. Save your image so that if things don’t go according to plan you can back track and pick up a few stages back. The faded area on the bottom left of the picture is a larger area so try this technique.

Make a free hand lasso selection of the right corner after you have repaired it, but make sure you select a large enough area to cover the left corner. Feather the edge by at least 10 pixels and using the shortcut keys of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V paste your selection to a new layer. Using the transform tools from the edit menu you will be able to flip this new layer horizontal and turn it until it blends into the rest of the tunic on the left. Over spill can be dealt with via the eraser or a layer mask, but try this trick.

Hold down the alt key and move your cursor over the line between the portrait and your copied selection as detailed below. As you do so the cursor will change to 2 linked circles. Click your mouse and the selection will wrap around the shape of your portrait transparency beneath.

Small light areas that remain can be dealt with via the clone tool. Step 7. The white stripes on the tunic may have taken on a blue tinge with your earlier manipulations and you can lighten those by choosing the dodge tool from the tool bar. Set the exposure for 10 and the settings for high lights and gently lighten the stripes and the letters HMS on the hat. If you feel ambitious you can add a gradation to the top of the background to finish the project, but this is not essential. Already we can hear the praise heaped upon you for making such a grand job of the restoration.