Photo Restoration

How to Rescue a Damaged Old Photo in Photoshop: Plan First, Clone Second
Video Tutorials

How to Rescue a Damaged Old Photo in Photoshop: Plan First, Clone Second

Client work will humble you fast. Early in my freelance run, someone handed me a scanned family photo that looked like it had survived a move, a flood, and a toddler with a crayon. I opened it in Photoshop and immediately started clone-stamping like a maniac, no plan, no structure, just vibes. Two hours later I had a mess that somehow looked worse than the original. That experience stuck with me, mostly because I invoiced for it anyway, but also because it taught me that photo restoration has a correct order of operations and I had been ignoring it.

Bringing the Dead Back to Life: How to Restore a Torn Photo in Photoshop
Video Tutorials

Bringing the Dead Back to Life: How to Restore a Torn Photo in Photoshop

Old photos are brutal. Not emotionally (okay, sometimes emotionally) but technically. Torn edges, yellowed paper, creases running straight through someone’s face. If a client or a family member ever slides one of these across a table at you, the gut reaction is to smile and nod while internally spiraling. I’ve been there. The good news is that Photoshop has everything you need to bring these things back from the brink. The bad news is that the workflow isn’t obvious if you’ve never done it before.

Photoshop's Generative Upscale Tool Might Save Your Old Photos (And Your Print Jobs)
Video Tutorials

Photoshop's Generative Upscale Tool Might Save Your Old Photos (And Your Print Jobs)

I have a folder on my hard drive called “Client Assets - HANDLE WITH CARE” and it is, genuinely, a disaster. Blurry product shots. Ancient family photos scanned at the wrong resolution. Images that looked fine on a phone screen but would print like a watercolor painting left in the rain. For years, my workaround was a combination of third-party upscaling apps, crossed fingers, and gently managing client expectations. Then Adobe quietly dropped a tool in Photoshop Beta that makes most of that song and dance completely unnecessary.

Rescuing a Wrecked Brochure Photo in Photoshop: A Real-World Walkthrough
Video Tutorials

Rescuing a Wrecked Brochure Photo in Photoshop: A Real-World Walkthrough

Client sends you a photo taken on an iPhone, under bad lighting, of a bent, faded, color-cast piece of paper. No raw file. No scanner. Just that. If you’ve been doing design or photo work for any length of time, you’ve been here. I’ve been here more times than I’d like to admit, usually sitting in a coffee shop trying to work miracles on someone’s terrible source material before a deadline hits.

One Click Photo Restoration: Photoshop's AI Neural Filters Actually Deliver
Video Tutorials

One Click Photo Restoration: Photoshop's AI Neural Filters Actually Deliver

I have a folder on my hard drive called “someday” and it is exactly what it sounds like. Old scanned photos, damaged client images, faded family snapshots that someone emailed me hoping I’d “fix them up real quick.” I’ve been putting them off for years because the traditional route, clone stamp, healing brush, frequency separation, manual scratch removal, takes forever and never looks quite right on genuinely aged photographs. So when I came across this Aaron Nace (PHLEARN) tutorial on Photoshop’s new AI-powered Photo Restoration neural filter, I sat up a little straighter in my coffee shop chair.