The Advanced Photoshop class is once again, quite painful. However, this week we had an interesting activity in which we took an old photo and cleaned it up using masks, levels, brushes, etc.

I took an old photo of my Grandma’s kitchen from the 1950s. Once I had restored it, I felt a wave of nostalgia at the old items that came back to life, the colors, and even with the pixelation, the images of relatives from 50 years past. I love looking at the details of old photos… the rug crumpled up under my uncle’s chair, the ice crusher I had forgotten was mounted to the wall (right edge of the photo), the smoke on the wall above the stove, the broom hanging by the stove, the pans cooking food, the chairs. All of these things were a part of my family’s culture at a time in the past. It was all important.

The original scanned photo had problems with white speckles that don’t show up here, a scratch on Grandpa’s face, and color issues which I fixed:

The cleaned up file: