Railfan Technology > Recommendations for Editing Software or Photo Restoration Program

I'm sure this topic has been discussed many times in the past, but I'd like to ask for some recommendations from others regarding what would be the best "recent" editing restoration programs for restoring slides and photographs using Windows 7 or 10?

I currently use an older Lightroom 3 that provides some good features, but it is impossible for me to restore tears, rips, etc. using this program. I can eliminate dust specs with it, but that too is very time consuming, etc. Overall, I outgrew Lightroom 3 about 2 weeks after I installed it quite sometime ago and is very limited in what I can do with it.

Just wondering what some of the pros here use or would recommend as the best for repairs, bulk dust / spec removal, etc., and ease of use would be? I have a considerable amount of torn, stained, and faded images I've collected that are rare photographs of my area, but need considerable work. I'm restoring these to publicly share with others to document the historic railroad operations in and around my area.

Thanks in advance for suggestions or comments.

I've found that for scanned photos and negatives, Photoshop Elements has most of what I need to do. The biggest use I have is the 'clone'/'stamp' function, that I can copy (clone) one piece of a photo to another. I've repaired photos for my local historical society that had rips as well as top surface loss due to bending that I've carefully reconstructed, sometimes one pixel at a time. Being able to easily 'zoom in', even to individual pixel level makes copy 'this color' to 'that place' a breeze. This works well for copying a lower area of a jacket to a same-color but missing image position. The zoom in capability allows me to make the edges of <whatever> as sharp as possible.

As far as color adjustments and overall noise reduction, however, I give Photoshop Elements a B+...workable but somewhat clumsy at times. Perhaps it's my not using those features in PSE often enough to make them 'easy' and 'automatic'. However, PSE (and the 'full' Photoshop) offers a great way of separating out 'layers' of individual photo elements such as a car, or persons jacket, and processed separately and then recombining layers later on. Using the 'magic wand' tool to select items works quite well as a means to remove certain items create a layer with each.

For slides and negatives, the Photoshop Elements 'filter' function with 'dust and scratches' or 'despeckle' works quite well, albeit with one caveat. I've found that if you set the 'radius' at 2 pixels or greater, the loss of photo sharpness starts becoming noticeable. So, what I end up doing first is removing all the dust I can from the slide using everything from compressed air (or squeeze-bulb tool) and/or a soft brush before I scan them. Then, I individually remove the 'big' dust and scratches using the 'clone'/'stamp' function. Usually there aren't more than 15-20 'big spots' needing to be fixed. Then I hit it with 'dust and scratches' or perhaps 'despeckle'. I sometimes try each and then 'undo' to compare results between the two options. I recently scanned a friends' family album of about 3000 slides and some had extensive mold on them. For the mold, I manually cloned what I could, especially persons' faces, clothing and birthday cakes and then left the rest of the mold untouched. Trying to restore a mold area of 30% or more becomes impossible, or an exceedingly long time to correct and still end up being obviously Photoshopped'

My other tool for cleanup is Lightroom. I updated to LR 6 from LR 5 a couple weeks ago. Using LR 3 would be a real handicap as versions 4,5 and 6 each added more tools for editing, some of which I'm just starting to learn to use. Everything from the 'heal' function for larger dust/scratches to contrast, exposure, white balance, saturation, clarity, and individual color manipulation make LR my 'go to' editing tool for slide and photo restoration as well as editing my own digital photos. Lightroom also has a fantastic catalog system where you can catalog using any key words and years later search for 'UP LOCO 8444' and all the pictures with those key words will show up. For black and white photos, being able to adjust the exposure and contrast as well as darkening the blacks or brightening the whites are all slider controlled.

For old photo or slide cleanup, LR is a good staring point. But the 'heal' function doesn't always choose the right piece of the picture to clone/copy from so in those situations, I undo the heal and save that for processing in Photoshop Elements. I think Lightroom has a better noise capability, but I only use that for high ISO-caused noise of my own digital photos.

I choose to purchase and upgrade both PSE and LR individually. Alternatively, the full Photoshop and Lightroom can be 'rented' for $10/month directly from Adobe. That may be more palatable then about $200 to purchase both, assuming upgrading your LR 3 will get the upgrade price rather than full price. If I were to 'start fresh' with my editing software, I'd probably do the $10/mo deal and if it got too overwhelming to learn, cancel the $10/mo and try some other software. I've heard and read good things about GIMP, a free photo editing program, so that could be a starting point as well.

Perhaps one of the strong points of LR and PS is the tutorials on www.adobe.com. They have countless youtube videos that shows how to do just about everything. One caution, however, is that the 'search' function doesn't work using Firefox. I do know that Internet Explorer works perfectly on Adobe. I haven't tried using Google Chrome. I'm also a Windows 7 user, that's why I still have Internet Explorer available vs Microsoft Edge on Windows 10.

For what it's worth, even though I've had 'primitive' versions of Photoshop (came free with my Canon G3 in 2002 or so) and Lightroom since LR 3, I consider myself a 'hack' at both. I'm learning how to do new stuff in each of them almost every time I use them. A couple of years ago, a friend of mine took a Photoshop course for credit at a nearby university, that's how complex and difficult Photoshop can be. Lightroom has many tricks of the trade that I have no clue on how or when to use them. So I simply muddle through what I need to do and use the 'help' button (question mark, these days) to find out how to do what I think I can do.

I owned Lightroom 3.5 and last month upgraded to Lightroon 6. Lightroom 6 is the newest version that one can purchase and own. I did not want to go to the cloud version and its monthly rental fee. The upgrade to Lightroom 6 cost only $78 + tax.

KG

I think Lightroom is good for working with digital originals that are pretty good to start with, but in my experience Photoshop has better tools for fixing the old stuff that has more serious flaws. Photoshop Elements has pretty good tools, but especially for color corrections (color shifted Ektachrome, faded or over exposed Anscochrome, etc) I think the full version of Photoshop is much better. But I would probably start with Elements because it is cheap. I have Elements on my laptop and am surprised at how capable it is, and some of the more sophisticated tools seem to be buried inside and you have to dig them out. But when it comes to color correction I am much happier with my PS full version on my desk top.

JBWX

Also happy with PS Elements, no clouds, no monthly installments. There is a lot of stuff I've never heard of that comes out in some of the TO posts about saving an image from the treasure box. The people I know who have the full up PS do a huge amount of that background work that most of us never know or even hear about.

kgmontreal Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I owned Lightroom 3.5 and last month upgraded to
> Lightroon 6. Lightroom 6 is the newest version
> that one can purchase and own. I did not want to
> go to the cloud version and its monthly rental
> fee. The upgrade to Lightroom 6 cost only $78 +
> tax.
>
> KG

When I upgraded from LR 5.x to 6.0, I decided to put the new version on a different drive letter. This caused a ton of trouble as to verify the upgrade, it 'looked' for the older version on the same drive rather than looking in the Windows Registry to find where it was. A ton of frustration later and a phone call to Adobe had me do a couple of really screwy keyboard combinations, respond to an email with the code in the email, the person then provided another code to enter into the LR 6 'prior version serial number' window. Oh, and the full version number is hidden in LR 5 (only the first 20 of 25 positions shown) and completely not locateable in LR 6 without going to the Adobe website and navigating to -your- 'installed products' list. So, should I ever go to version 7 five years in the future, presumably, it will get the version 6 serial number from the Adobe website.

Contrast that with simply upgrading the version to the same drive, all the old serial number hassles were all taken care of automatically.

Adobe has said there will be no Version 7.

BRAtkinson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> kgmontreal Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I owned Lightroom 3.5 and last month upgraded
> to
> > Lightroon 6. Lightroom 6 is the newest version
> > that one can purchase and own. I did not want
> to
> > go to the cloud version and its monthly rental
> > fee. The upgrade to Lightroom 6 cost only $78
> +
> > tax.
> >
> > KG
>
> When I upgraded from LR 5.x to 6.0, I decided to
> put the new version on a different drive letter.
> This caused a ton of trouble as to verify the
> upgrade, it 'looked' for the older version on the
> same drive rather than looking in the Windows
> Registry to find where it was. A ton of
> frustration later and a phone call to Adobe had me
> do a couple of really screwy keyboard
> combinations, respond to an email with the code in
> the email, the person then provided another code
> to enter into the LR 6 'prior version serial
> number' window. Oh, and the full version number
> is hidden in LR 5 (only the first 20 of 25
> positions shown) and completely not locateable in
> LR 6 without going to the Adobe website and
> navigating to -your- 'installed products' list.
> So, should I ever go to version 7 five years in
> the future, presumably, it will get the version 6
> serial number from the Adobe website.
>
> Contrast that with simply upgrading the version to
> the same drive, all the old serial number hassles
> were all taken care of automatically.

Bob Wilcox
Charlottesville, VA
My Flickr Shots

I wanted to thank everyone for their comments and emails regarding the software selection. It was all most helpful and very informative. Thank you again!