HOW TO Scan and restore faded and/or damaged photos
Scan photos
Photomyne’s Photo Scan app scans and restores old prints straight from your iPhone. You can try it for three days for free. Place up to four prints on a flat surface. Tap and hold Scan for three seconds to scan them.
Repair damage
iOS apps such as Photo Scan do a great job of sprucing up the colors and tones of digitized prints, but to repair dust specks and scratches you need to manually retouch using desktop apps such as Photoshop CC.
Get smart
Photoshop can assist your restoration using Machine Learning (ML). Choose Filter > Neural Filters. Turn on ‘JPEG Artefacts Removal’. This analyzes the shot and smooths out some of the portrait’s rough texture.
Restore
Photo Scan crops and rotates each scanned shot and then restores it by sharpening detail, increasing contrast and cooling down warm colors for natural skin tones. You can fine–tune the results using presets.
Work in Photoshop
Choose Filter > Noise > Dust & Scratches. Increase Radius. A larger value hides bigger scratches but can lose facial detail. Drag Threshold to the right to compromise between hiding scratches while preserving detail.
Skin smoothing
To give the face a smoother complexion and reduce the presence of grain, turn on the Skin Smoothing filter. Experiment with the Blur and Smoothness sliders to help preserve important detail.
Colorize photos
Photo Scan can bring people back from the past and into the present by colorizing old black–and– white shots. Simply scan the shot via the app (see step 1), then tap on the ‘Colorize this photo’ button.
Heal scratches
Grab the Spot Healing Brush tool. Spray over remaining spots or scratches. The tool fills the sprayed areas with adjacent patches of clear texture. Finish off by choosing Image > Auto Contrast for healthier tones.
Final touch
As a finishing touch you can add a wash of color to the restored photo. Toggle on the Colorize neural filter. You can experiment with different looks by exploring the presets in the Profile drop–down menu.