Best Software to Restore Old Photographs

Every photograph is a moment in time, frozen forever. Once it is captured, the moment passes and the photo is all that remains. This is why old photos need to be restored and preserved well, because they all represent precious moments.
There are dozens of accidents that can ruin a photograph - damage from air and water, scratches, coffee stains etc.

Restoring old photos and bringing them back to life used to require experience in using tools like Photoshop and Lightroom, but not any more!
You have come to the right place to learn about photo restoration software and how to use them. We will even look at free programs that you can use and special tools for MAC.

Which is the best software to restore old photographs?

Restoring old photos used to be tough because you had to do everything manually. In fact, you could not even turn a faded and torn black and white photo into a fresh, coloured image.
Here, you will learn about SoftOrbits Photo Retoucher, a tool specially designed for cleaning up any damage or scratches in old photos and colourizing them in just a few clicks!
With options like blemish removal, clone stamping and scratch removal, you can select the areas to be cleaned up and let Photo Retoucher do its job. All your old photos can be easily turned into new images ready for framing!

How to use SoftOrbits software to restore old photographs?

Enhancing old photographs is easy with Photo Retoucher because unlike other confusing programs to restore old photographs, this is simple to use and curated for old photo restoration.

Being an advanced photo dust removal software, you need to download and install it once on your computer to use all its features.
As soon as the installation is complete, you’ll be able to open any image and make it look like a new photo taken from a DSLR.
And the best thing is, you don’t even need any previous image editing experience! The tools are self-explanatory, so you will be able to understand which options to use. For example, to remove a scratch, you simply have to select the pencil icon, mark the scratch and click Remove.
Let us go through the steps you should follow to change an old, fading photo into a brand new image!

What are some other features that software to restore old photographs provides?

Photo Retoucher goes beyond a simple cleaning tool. After removing scratches, stains, date stamps etc. you can use the editing program to process your image too!

Image Correction

No photo can be completely restored without small adjustments in brightness, contrast and white balance. This is why Photo Retoucher is an excellent tool.
Clicking on the Image Correction option in the toolbar will give you different lighting adjustments like contrast, tint, gamma and temperature.
You will not have to open any other software to get the perfect exposure!
There is also an Auto Correction button, where the program itself will adjust the parameters to give you the correct exposure and white balance.

Colourize Option

SoftOrbits Photo Retoucher also comes with an automatic colourize option. You can find this option under the list of tools on top.
No matter what the black and white image looks like, Photo Retoucher will analyse the areas and fill them with different colours on its own. Adding colours to a faded photo will definitely bring it back to life!

Manual Cleaning Tools

With highly damaged images, some areas may not be removed in one go. In such cases, you can try using the following three options for restoration, which offer more control over how the spot will be removed:

Clone Stamp Tool

Clone stamp features are a boon for photographers, because they let you replicate a part of the image over another part. You can use this to duplicate a flower or bokeh in your image, or simple cover up any damaged area with a clean one.
SoftOrbits Photo Retoucher has a Clone stamp tool in its toolbar. The advantage of using this is that you won’t be relying on the dust and scratch removal software to do the cleaning.
You can manually pick and choose the area which will be used to cover the scratch or stain.

Follow these steps for using this feature:

1. After opening the photo in Softorbits software to restore old photographs, select the Clone Stamp icon from the toolbar. Your mouse pointer will now look like a cross.
2. Now you have to select the good area – which will be cloned and used to cover up whatever part of the photo you wish. Before this selection is made, do not forget to adjust the size of the brush. If you want to clone a large area, like some seashells of your beach photo, you will need to increase the size of the brush.
3. While holding down the Alt button, left click on the mouse and brush over the area. For restoring an old photo, you will have to select a clean area that matches the background of the damaged area.
4. Once you are done cloning, you need to stamp that over the bad part of the image. Simply release the Alt key, right click with your mouse, and start moving over the bad part.
5. As you click and paint, you will see that the selected area is being replicated over the bad area in the image.

This method is very effective for cleaning small scratches which have damaged different parts of the image. By selecting different areas to clone – as per the background colour – you can cover up the scratch in small steps!

Smudge Tool

Like the name suggests, you can use the Smudge tool to blend and blur a part of the image with its surrounding. This is useful for small spots or faded areas!
By simply clicking on the affected area, you can blend the spot into the background and make it less visible.
During restoration of an old photo, this comes in handy for cleaning up portraits.