Restoring old Photos in Photoshop

All of us have pictures from those days of black and white photography tucked away in family albums. Some may have degenerated over time and turned yellow in parts. These can be restored with Photoshop. Here is how. Step 1 : I have opened this photo in Photoshop a friend gave to me. Since the negative was unavailable I have scanned them at 750 dpi and saved them in lossless format tif. Notice how yellow it is in parts. This has to be removed.
Step 2 : Press CTRL+SHIFT+N on your keyboard and the New Layer dialogue box will open When it opens change the 'Mode' to Color from Normal in the popup.
Step 3 : Now reduce the Opacity by dragging the slider to the left to 50 %. Click ok.
Step 4 : Notice in the Layers/Channels/Paths pallette that the new layer -- Layer 1 -- has been formed above the 'Background' or the photo that has been opened.
Step 5 : Click the Brush Tool.
Step 6 : Click where the red arrow points to and a drop down box appears. I have chosen a thick hard brush from those available by clicking on it. I can also increase and decrease the size of the brush tip with the [ ] (bracket) keys on my keyboard.
Step 7 : Now go to Swatches found on the right of Photoshop and click the white. When you hover your cursor over the colors it will turn into an eyedropper. The name of the color will also be visible. Click to select the white.
Step 8 : Note that the Foreground color at the left of Photoshop has turned to white. Now we are ready.
Step 9 : I have made the brush tip big with this ] (bracket) key and am painting out the yellowish stains.

Step 10 : Notice that a lot of the ugly yellow stains have disappeared.

Step 11 : Go to Layer>Flatten image.

Step 12 : Go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Levels

Step 13 : When the New Layer dialogue box opens make sure that 'Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask' is checked. Click ok.

Step 14 : The Levels dialogue box opens.

Step 15 : Now drag the black slider to the right so that it aligns with the foot of the black graph that you see. (See above). Click ok.

Step 16 : The contrast of the image has improved. But those yellow stains are visible again. Now again repeat Steps 2 to 9 i.e. painting the photo with white.

Step 17 1: After painting the image with white the yellow has disappeared. Flatten the image and repeat the process.

Step 18 : Now is this not much better than what we started with. Flatten the image and use the Levels as in Steps 12 to 15. Then if necessary again paint it with white as in steps 2 to 9. Then flatten the image as shown in Step 11.

Step 19 : This is how it looks. Now crop the image. If you do not know how to do it, see here.

Step 20 : The photo has been cropped. The wall at the left which appeared tilted is now straight. You can even paint your black and white photo with this tutorial. See Here. What you need is a great deal of patience and you can work magic.

I have posted a new second part here.