Tools for restoring old photos using Xara Designer

[cadudesun]

Hi,

I am new to Xara Designer and trying to find out the right tools for the right work!

For now I need to restore old photos damages (scratches, risks, holes) and overall image adjusts old photos may need (which I don't know exactly).

Has anyone used Xara to restore old photos? Could you share the Xara tools which are handy for that? Any other tips are welcomed?

Thanks a lot,

Cadu

[wizard509]

Angelize has, hopefully she will jump in here. Some of that damage would be fairly easy to repair, but from the sounds of it some may not.

[angelize]

Hi cadudsun, Welcome to Talkgraphics

First it would be easier if you could post an example of a photo you are wanting to restore Then I could give you a more detailed answer. different photos may require slightly different methods depending on what kind of damage and how much damaged there is but generally you want to start by scanning your originals at a fairly hi resolution, at least 300dp Small marks and scratches can often be quickly removed with the photo heal tool (it looks like two crossed bandaids on the photo tool fly out) larger areas of damage can be replaced by using vector shapes with transparencies, fills and feathering. Xara's photo editing tools can do a pretty good job for basic adjustments.

[cadudesun]

Hi Angelize,

Thanks for answering and making yourself available for further instructions

I've made available a couple of photos I intend to restore: http://goo.gl/dUFZ3D

I followed your instructions scanning at hi-res (300dpi). I downsized the resolution (96dpi) in the sample photos just to upload them faster.

To be honest, first difficult I had with Xara was trying to blur the face of the subjects. I don't know if it is because the originals have big resolution, to blur I had to:

- Mask the faces with the region painter tool
- select photo tool and then blur -100 (total) x 6 times this process to achieve a reasonable blurring, since 1 time blur was almost useless (quite week blur)

How could I handle better the Xara in order to blur a face with large amount of blur being necessary to perform just one time process?

Regarding the photos themselves, any tip on Xara's tools to restore them will be very welcomed.

Best,

Carlos

[ss-kalm]

Carlos,

The "Blur" slider goes from -100 to + 100. However, you can type a value of -1000 to +1000 in the box.

As Frances said, I think Xara's Photo heal tool should be able to handle most of the fixes, depending on how exact you want to be.

[angelize]

Yes I think the scratches and other small marks could be easily fixed using the photo heal tool and the clone tool. The region painter is good for brightening eyes and whitening teeth
for smoothing faces I use a layered approach when working in Designer pro. and don't use the photo blur tool on the photo toolbar. instead try this:

1. select your photo and hit ctrl + K this will put a duplicate exactly ton top of your original.
2. hide this cloned copy by clicking the eye icon next ti it in the page and layer gallery.
3. select the bottom photo and click the FX icon on the photo tool flyout to open the live effects.
4. at the very top of the list select enhance a dialogue box will pop up with sliders for blur/sharpen and more. this slider will let you blur to -800 so do just that blur the heck out of the photo (don't worry about what the rest of the photo looks like at this point)
5. unhide the top photo
6. make sure nothing is selected and click the wine glass icon to open the transparency tool and set the amount slider to about 60%
7. select the eraser tool set the size to suit your needs and the feathering to at least 50% (you can experiment with this to get a good smoothing without losing too much detail and making your subject appear as if they are made of plastic) and simply brush over the areas you want to smooth and leave areas where you want to keep full detail untouched.

I would have done an example with one of your photos but the faces are badly blurred I assume to protect the identity of the subjects.

[cadudesun]

Thanks for the help of all of you!
Through the heal tool I could recovery the photos greatly.
It was very handy to know you can type any blur value despite the slider limitation.
The blur method through duplicating the photo is great. Actually, I learnt from it I could apply other effects besides blur, for instance to splash colors in a photo.
Cheers,
Cadu