55 Years of Photos
January 9, 2008Earlier this year my grandparents had their 55th wedding anniversary and I wanted to make something special for them. The problem was that I was still in school at the time and didn’t have time to go over to their house until the day before the anniversary party. I borrowed a bunch of pictures and albums from them and spent all night sorting, scanning, and restoring pictures.
This is what I came up with. It may not be the best work I’ve ever done but I was able to do in one evening.
Besides fixing scanning dust spots I did have to do some quick Photoshopping. I loved this photo of my grandma riding in a boat, but my grandpa isn’t paying attention.
So I took his head from a similar shot.
I also had to copy the tree line and repeat it to soften the harsh edges of the curtain.
My favorite picture though was a picture no one knew they had. After some prodding my grandma remembered an old photo she had in the bottom of her sock drawer. She pulled out an adorable picture of them at a high school dance. It turns out this is the first picture they have together and nobody has ever seen it!
Unfortunately, because this photos was kept in a sock drawer it was bent, ripped, and scratched. So I did some quick Photoshopping. (Before)
After
Before
After
My grandparents loved it! They were suspicious when I borrowed the albums the day before but didn’t think I could actually get something done by the next day. And to think my quick little Photoshop project would lead to us finding a great family heirloom.
You look a lot like your grandmother in those last pictures.
You are AMAZING with photoshop! I love to play with it, but haven’t quite gotten this good yet. Thanks for the inspiration!
Thanks Sully! Yeah, I look a lot like my dad’s side especially my aunt (her daughter).
Photoshop isn’t really that hard you just need to spend a little time with it. I’m actually self taught when it comes to Photoshop so there’s a lot of things I don’t know. Just a few months ago I finally learned how to make an action. I never needed to use them before then.
I’m trying to keep the tutorials short and simple so people try some of this stuff without spending too much time on it. Keep letting me know what you think!
Robin
hi, i just wanna ask the tool you used for cropping the head of your grandpa and the tool you used for repairing the bent picture of your grandparnts. thanks in advance.
Hi Renee,
For cropping I mainly used the eraser and the magnetic and manual lassos. I used the eraser in large areas and the lasso for the finer things (magnetic where there is a good contrast and manual where there isn’t and use the union function at the top to add your selections together). For the lasso after you have the area you want to delete selected you just hit the delete button.
For the bent picture I used my favorite tool the clone stamp. You hold down the Alt button and select an area next to the bent section. Then release the alt button and stamp where the bend discoloration is.
HTH!
Robin