Restoring Scanned Photos in Paint Shop Pro

There are a number of tools that you can use to retouch and restore scanned photos in Paint Shop Pro. Here, we’ll look at how some of these tools in action. You may also want to check out these tips for scanning photos to find out how to get the best digital images possible out of your hard copy photographs.

For this project, we'll use a photo of my grandparents (shown below) that my aunt scanned and sent to me. (Click any image for a larger view.)

Considering its age, this photo is actually in pretty good condition, but there are still a few creases and small stains that we could get rid of using Paint Shop Pro.

Let’s start by looking at the crease that’s passing through my grandfather’s head.

One easy way to get rid of folds and creases like this is to use the Scratch Remover Tool that’s located about mid way down the side tool panel of Paint Shop Pro.

This tool works best when the background of the crease, or “scratch”, that you are trying to remove has a fairly basic texture like the wall in this photo. To use the Scratch Remover Tool, just click on the photo at the beginning of the crease and drag it to the end.

In this particular photo, I’m only going to use the Scratch Remover Tool to remove the portions of the crease that have the wall as background. The part of the scratch that runs through the hair has a more complicated background so we’ll use a different tool for that. Here’s what the photo looks like after removing this part of the crease.

To get rid of the scratch that is passing through the hair, I’m going to use the Clone Brush. This tool is located in the same place as the Scratch Remover Tool on Paint Shop Pro’s side tool panel.

If you’ve never used the Clone Brush before, you may have to practice a little bit to get the hang of it. Basically, the Clone Brush copies one part of a digital photo and pastes it onto another. For this project, I’ll be using the brush to copy part of the hair that doesn’t have the scratch running through it and applying that snippet to the portion that does.

First, adjust the size of the Clone Brush until it’s fairly small. Then, right-click on an area of the hair very close to the area of the photo that is scratched.

Next, left-click on the area that you want to cover up with this cloned section of the photo.

One of the nice features of the Clone Brush is that it saves these relative distance settings until you select another tool in Paint Shop Pro. That is, you don’t have to keep reselecting new source areas for the brush. Whenever you choose a new target area for the tool, it will automatically select a relative source area based on your first selection unless you manually choose another. This way, you can quickly move the Clone Brush up and down the scratch to get rid of the entire problem area.

Below is our photo after applying the Clone Brush to get rid of the scratch running through the hair.

You can use this same technique to remove other scratches and creases in the photograph.

Continue on to the next page where we talk about more Paint Shop Pro tools that can be used to restore scanned photos.