Fixing Faded Photos

You may have a photo that seems washed out or faded. This generally happened to old photos that have been scanned or converted to a digital photo. There are a few simple steps you can use to enhance the photo.

The notes here are for the Photoshop program but you can do this in all picture/paint programs.

Contrast

The contrast of a picture is the the light (white) and dark (Black) in an image. In Photoshop:

• From the Image menu, choose Adjustments
• Choose Brightness/Contrast
• Use the slide control and adjust the Contrast to get a better balance of colours
• You can adjust the Brightness too

As a rule of thumb Contrast makes the darker parts darker, and the brightness will make the whiter parts whiter.

Saturation

The Saturation adds extra colour 

• From the Image menu, choose Adjustments
• Choose Hue/Saturation
• Make sure Master is selected (instead of one colour band)
• Use the slide control and adjust the Saturation to get a better degree of colour
• You can adjust the Lightness and or Hue as well

You may need to strike a balance between the three but Saturation is the main adjustment.