Tutorial: AKVIS Retoucher

Retouching photos in 7 steps

The author of the tutorial is Andrey Shevchuk. He used Adobe Photoshop and plug-ins AKVIS Retoucher and AKVIS Stamp to retouch a photo from his family archives.

Here is the photo that Andrey decided to retouch. The retouching didn't take much time, but it required assiduity and eargeness to achieve the best possible result.

Step one

The photo is faded and has a yellowish tint, therefore, first we should convert the photo to greyscale and increase the image contrast.

• Apply the commands Auto Levels and Auto Contrast in Adobe Photoshop. If you are not satisfied with the result, you can also do the levels correction manually. When the first step is done, the contrast will be improved and the yellowish tint will become less pronounced.
• Then we apply the command Desaturate of Adobe Photoshop and the photo finally becomes black and white.

Step two

Well begun is half done. Now it'll be easier to proceed. We will remove scratches using the plug-in AKVIS Retoucher.

• Before you call the plug-in AKVIS Retoucher you should select the scratches. The easiest way to select scratches and small defects in Adobe Photoshop is to use the Quick Mask mode. Press the key "Q" in the keyboard to switch to the Quick Mask mode.
• Use the tools Pencil and Brush with a hard edge to paint over the scratches on the photo. The selection will be highlighted in semitransparent red.

• We switch to the Standard mode of Photoshop by pressing the key "Q" once again. Then we invert the selection by pressing the key combination Shift+Ctrl+I. You will see that the areas highlighted in red in the Quick Mask mode now look as a selection.
• We call the AKVIS Retoucher plug-in. In the plug-in window the selection is shown in red. Press the button and you will see the scratches disappearing.
• If you are satisfied with the result (which is surely so, especially if you selected the scratches thoroughly), press the button to apply the restoration result and close the plug-in window.

Step three

We continue retouching the photo: we retouch the frame, the torn corner and the scratches that cross the people in the photograph. We repeat the actions of step 2: we select the defects, call AKVIS Retoucher and start the restoration process.

Step four

For the further image processing we will need one more plug-in - AKVIS Stamp.

This tool does not require to select damaged areas beforehand. Just call the plug-in AKVIS Stamp and edit the photo in the plug-in window.

First we use the plug-in AKVIS Stamp to restore the shirt's collar of the man in the middle. It won't take long.

• Call the plug-in AKVIS Stamp.
• Adjust the size of the stamp. By default it is equal to 20, but can vary between 4 and 60. For our task we need a smaller brush of 7-9.
• Press the Alt key and use the left mouse button to select the intact part of the collar as a pattern for cloning (we will clone the line and an area around it).
• When you click the chosen area with the mouse keeping the Alt-key pressed, this pattern is saved in the plug-in's memory buffer. Now make a left-click (without the Alt-key) on the area of the image where the collar should appear and paste the selected pattern. You can insert the pattern as many times as you like. It is possible to cancel the last action with the key combination Ctrl+Z.
• Now you can smooth the colors of the shirt by selecting a one-color pattern under the collar and pasting the pattern into damaged parts.

As a result you will see the following picture.

Step five

In the previous step we showed you how to clone a part of an image using AKVIS Stamp. The peculiarity of the plug-in is that when you paste the cloned pattern, it automatically adjusts to the color range and the texture of the background.

We will use this feature to remove small defects and the surface imperfections. As a result we see the following picture:

Step six

At this step you will see one more feature of the plug-in AKVIS Stamp. The author of the tutorial calls it "puttying".

After the restoration of the missing part of the image we can still notice some imperfections on the restored parts.

• We will sample a smooth pattern on the right of the people and we will use it to smooth down the backgroud.
• We will use this technique to remove small defects on the suit of the standing man.

As a result we get the following photo.

Step seven

Here you will see one more feature of the plug-in AKVIS Stamp - reconstruction of missing details. Let's take the curtains, for example. We can notice that they do not reach the ceiling. We will extend them to the ceiling using the plug-in AKVIS Stamp. We can increase the stamp size to 61, clone the pattern in the upper part of the curtain and copy it to the upper part of the photo.

The changes were introduced so gradually that one could think the photo has always been like that. But if we put the original photo and the restored photo side by side we will see that much work has been done.