TABLE OF CONTENTS As a digital photography author one of the areas that I am often asked about is photo restoration. As photographers, it is a editing activity that most of us will attempt at least once during our life time. After all, many of the memories of important family events and history are associated with images of the time and, even with the right care and attention, lots of these photos end up a little worse for wear. In this chapter I thought that I would present you with a variety of techniques that you can use to restore, or repair, those images most precious to you. Rather than detailing the techniques in isolation, where sometimes they lose significance, I have chosen to apply them as part of a process of restoring real life photos.
As you will discover, most retouching projects require the application of a variety of techniques in multiple steps to coax the aged photo back to its best. So even though the example photos presented here have quite different problems (and associated solutions) they also contain some degree of overlap in areas such as removing of dust and scratches. These techniques are by no way an exhaustive list of all that are possible, but they will provide you with a good basis to start your restoration work.
