Moments of the Past

The author of this article Tracy Bullen (Australia) shares her experience: "I am always on the search for software that can make my restorations not so much easier, but faster. Recently I downloaded a program called AKVIS Retoucher and decided to try it on one of my old family photos. I didn’t take screenshots because for the first time I was too engrossed in what this gem of a program can do."

Compare the original photo and the final restoration result:

Tracy describes what she did to restore the photo:

The original photograph was sent to me by my Aunt and measures 2 and a half inches by 5 inches. I took a photograph of it using my canon 600D to get the size I needed to be able to restore it. I only shoot in RAW files and convert to JPEG using Corel Paintshop X6.


Source Image

The features of your program that I used on this photo were the Spot Remover , Patch , Clone and Selection Brush . The one that I did in photoshop was using only the clone and content recognition. I had also changed the colour of the one I did in photoshop to greyscale prior to doing the restoration.

As you can see, the background of the photo is already pretty clear. The clarity I referred to in this photo is the seamless integration of the restored sections into the original photo using AKVIS, as compared to the blurriness of using photoshop. However, I have been able to use AKVIS Retoucher to correct a photo by patching and cloning darker areas to lighter areas to add more contrast and shadows, so it certainly can be done with your program, if someone is willing to sit and take the time to do it, as it involves a lot of time working on tiny areas of the photos. I still have work to do on the restored photo, but will leave it as it is for now. Later I will be restoring the right hand side of the house. The guitars will be left alone to keep some of the ‘old’ look to the photo.

Where the background was fixed, I used the Patch tool larger than I need to use it, then used the Clone brush to bring the surrounding area into it. The holes were fixed using the Spot remover brush and the Selection Brush. I zoomed the size of the photo in the program to use the Selection Brush as I use it on the smallest (red mask brush) tool size. The window was done using both Clone and Patch, the same way I did the pieces of the background.


Restoration using AKVIS Retoucher

I saved the photo and I can compare it with a version of the photo that I did using photoshop:


Restoration using Photoshop CS6

The photoshop version took 12 hours and I still wasn’t happy with it. In comparison, AKVIS Retoucher literally outdid Photoshop, not only in the restoration part, but the clarity of the photo is really beyond.

Retoucher v. 12.1 - 10日間の評価期間