Photo sharping/improving in new Xara

It has been years since I was up on TG as I have not been using the program.

I have had many Xara programs over the years and the latest I have is Designer ProX. I designed a family web site using my Xara Designer programs.

Two things have happened - 1- my computer crashed and I lost my Xara web site files. I do have the individual files. 2- Someone hijacked my domain name and I am not able to get it back.

I need to re-build the site. I can do so using my ProX but was wondering if there have been improvements made by Xara in sharping/improving old photos of which I have a lot?

Thank you for your time - jb

Wow, you've been through the mill.

The first thing I always do with photos is use the Photo Tool > Brightness Levels Dialog > Auto. This works especially well with faded photos.

Then further tweaking the Input levels. Also old photos lose their saturation so increasing the Enhance > Saturation level a small amount can help.

jeb, sorry you lost your domain - it does need removing from your signature.

Restoring old photos, up to now, has been an art.

Xara doesn't do batch work but it does have the simple application of current settings with Ctrl+C (Copy) & Shift+Ctrl+A (Paste Attributes).
Retouching would usually use the Photo Heal, Clone and magic Erase Tools.

There are free bitmap products like Krita (Smart Patch) that could also be used but probably has a learning curve.

If you have 1,000 images that doing these by hand will be tedious.

Have a look at VanceAI, https://vanceai.com/pricing-for-win/?source=app. It handles tears, scratches and sharpen, all in bulk.
It costs but you need to trade off against your time and sanity.

Acorn

Cool program @acorn. Thanks for the link. @jeb you get a couple of freebies to begin with. Pretty impressive actually.

Wow - the first replies I get are from old friends for way back. Great to see that you two are still around and giving out the outstanding help that you have been doing for years.

I have enhanced all the photos on my site as much as it possible in my Designer Pro-X, many of them going back into the 1920's - and most have come out fairly good. A few, not so much but the original I have isn't that good a quality.

If there has been upgrades in the newer Xara products that would make it worth the cost I would get it but don't want to spend the money unless it would make a good difference as everything I need is in my Designer Pro-X which has no monthly/yearly cost.

I don't have that many photos - maybe 25 or so but I will check out the programs you have listed.

Again, tks guys - both of you are an amazing knowledge well for all the Xara products from way back when the first introduced many of the parts of today's program in individual products.

I will delete my site info.

Take care and the best for you and your family - jim brown