Beginner’s Guide to Retouching Old Photographs in Adobe Photoshop

Master a range of Adobe Photoshop’s retouching tools and show some love to old family photographs, dirty scanned negatives or those digital pictures you took with a dusty camera, so you can proudly showcase them online or get them printed!

During my career as a photographer and teacher of photography, I have retouched a huge number of photographs, perfecting the way I use various retouching tools in Photoshop — and in this course, I am excited to share with you my tips to help you get started with retouching old photographs, master a range of Photoshop's tools and ultimately speed up your retouching workflow!

This course is designed for:

• beginners and anyone who wants to learn about how to retouch and restore images in Adobe Photoshop;
• students and anyone starting out in photography who has been experimenting with chemical photography and now wants to digitise their work;
• anyone who is interested in digitising Lomography photographs.

All of the tools which I’m going to be showing in this course can also be used on digital photographs, so if you have not got any scanned negatives, don’t worry, this course will still be useful.

In this course, you'll learn:

• how to use the Clone Stamp, Spot Healing Brush, Healing Brush and Patch tools to clean and retouch your photographs;
• what each of these tools works best for;
• how to retouch your photographs non-destructively to have more flexibility and a more streamlined workflow;
• how to quickly and non-destructively enhance your photographs using Curves;
• what different Colour Modes are best used for;
• how to save your image for use and archival purposes.

Join me in this course to improve your retouching skills and restore cherished photographs to their former glory!

— Dominic / Attitude Creative

Required Software:

For the best experience possible, you’ll need a desktop Creative Cloud version of Adobe Photoshop, but you’ll still be able to complete this class using older versions.

What Students Say About This Course:

"The way of teaching was very clear and precise. I learned so much in 36 minutes!" — Raag

"This has to be one of the most comprehensive tutorials on how to effectively use the Cloning, Healing and Spot Healing tool, not to mention the Curves adjustment feature in Photoshop. I also now understand how to use the Layers feature which is something I have always struggled with. Dominic made this so easy to understand, and have taken the fear out of retouching photos. Thank you so much!" — Barb

"I have never really wanted to learn retouching, but it was such a charming idea to renew old pictures that motivated me to take this course." — Marietta

"This was an excellent course and very accessible. The tutor provided a comprehensive explanation of how to use the Spot Healing Brush, Patch tool, Healing tool and Clone stamp. The best trick I took away from this is Non-Destructive Retouching allowing me to quickly undo any changes I didn't like. I would highly recommend this course to anyone starting out in photography retouching in Photoshop." — Laura

"One of the best retouching courses. Simple and highly effective." — Kadri

FAQs

Do I need any previous skills or experience to take this course?

This course is specially designed for beginners, and you do not need any previous experience restoring old photographs. Throughout the course, you will be taken step-by-step through the process and clear explanations and definitions will be provided. However, having some prior experience using Adobe Photoshop or other image editing programs can help and make the learning process even more enjoyable!

Will you be covering automatic retouching tools in this course?

No, we will not be cutting any corners in this course, and instead concentrate on how you can get the most out of using the right retouching tools for the job! Whilst there are quite a few filters which can be used for retouching, the results these produce are not as good as traditional digital retouching techniques. The best restoration jobs take time, care, patience and attention to detail.

Will I be able to use the tools and techniques covered in this course to retouch digital photographs?

You will be able to use the same tools, techniques and workflows for removing any sensor dust or marks from your digital photographs. However, as this course is about image restoration and removing dust and imperfections from images, we are not going to cover specific techniques for retouching skin or editing portraits.

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Related Course:

Learn how to take advantage of Adobe Photoshop’s Colorize Neural Filter to get started with colorizing & complete the look with manual final touches in my course Beginner’s Guide to Colorizing Old Photographs in Adobe Photoshop and bring old black & white photos to life through color!