Vintage photo restoration and editing

[J.Snow]

Would love to make contact with anyone or all that are using Affinity for the restoration of old and vintage photos. Am interested in the techniques you are using, work flow, etc. I am currently using Photoshop CC 2018 and would like to move away from. Have been a Serif user for many years and have always had excellent success with their software. Just trying to short-circuit the learning curve to get started with Affinity.

Many thanks to those that respond and be assured I will return the courtesy.

Jerry Snow - Pop's Custom Products

 

[Gabe]

Hi @J.Snow,

Welcome to the forums. 

I've done a few colourizations with Photo. This would be a rough workflow:

• Convert to b/w
• Restore using the Inpainting brush tool/clone tool/healing brush tool/patch tool (depending on the photo) - Make sure you don't overdo it 
• Minimal or no noise reduction - I like the celluloid film grain  

 

[IanSG]

It's not something I've done much of, but I recently had reasonable results recovering some 70-80 year old B&W images.  The most useful tools  were the levels adjustment, contrast, sharpening, and shadows and highlights.  I didn't have a lot of luck with the dust & scratches filter (too soft) but the inpainting and clone tools got them down to acceptable levels. 

[J.Snow]

Many thanks for responding. Appreciate your past experience and how you accomplished. I'll bet there is a chart of comparative Affinity actions to Photoshop available somewhere. Anyone know of such and where to find???

[John Rostron]

You might like to look at Retouch Pro (www.retouchpro.com). It is fairly Photoshop-oriented, but you may find useful techniques that can be done in Affinity.

John