Saving Your Photographs

Here's a quick tutorial on fixing faded or under/over exposed photos using a photo editor. I received this photo in a group of family photos. Obviously it's seen better days, and while I can't restore the edges that are torn off I can fix the fading in it. Before I would have probably upped the contrast and tried to fix it that way, but this doesn't usually give you enough control: enter the curves tool. (Curves tools are common in many photo editing packages including Photoshop, Gimp, and PhotoImpact.) Basically what it does is let you control an input tone and stretch or compress it to give a particular output tone. In plain language, you can control if a certain shade of grey in your black and white photograph will become a darker or lighter shade of grey. Or if your photo is faded, if some of your darker greys should actually become black. I've also used curves to fix photos that were way too dark because of not enough light or flash, basically salvaging a photo where nothing was visible to make it fairly presentable. For a much more detailed tutorial you can check out this link. Curves can also be used on colour photographs to change the tone of the picture and the light in it. It's a very powerful tool, one I'm just starting to learn. Perhaps Grant will also be able to give us some pointers in this area?