Mask a Photo to Cover Irregularities

The masking option also helps in making an old photo look new by covering any irregularities in it.

In many houses people wish to renew their old photos as they renew any household items. The photo may be of their ancestors, old house or any similar things. Not only in house even in many organizations, companies, and educational departments it is required to preserve some old photos. Thus the masking helps in this preservation of the so-called antiques.

This is a little painstaking job and requires much time even from 3-4 hours. Patience is more demanded in such works. Let’s see the step-by-step procedure of this manipulation work.

Step1:
Select the picture and create a duplicate the layer. This is to preserve the original picture. Right clicking on the background layer will pop out the option of creating a duplicate layer. By double clicking on the new layer it can be renamed.

Step 2:
In adjustment layer pallet select levels in which certain adjustments must be made according to the picture.

Step 3:
Using the eyedropper tool, select the sample size. Now using the soft round brush selected from the brush options, the empty spaces or irregular areas can be filled in the picture. In between, increasing or decreasing the brush size would be of more help.

Step 4:
Now the color of the picture must be made uniform. The darker areas must be made lighter. For this purpose selecting overlay option with the brush would help. It is also required to set the blur tool to light mode.

Step 5:
The uneven modes should be corrected. Even for this purpose a new background layer can be created.

Step 6:
Zoom in to make any finer corrections.

Step 7:
Now after completion of these procedures the layers must be merged down to get the effect on the original photo.

Still finer corrections can be made to improve the quality of the photo by adding little noise to the picture. For this again a duplicate layer must be made, as Photoshop does not allow making changes in the original background layer. From menu the filter option should be selected. A pop down menu appears from which texture and further grains can be selected. These selections must be made according to the photo and this may vary with each photo to get a unique appearance. When such options are selected the intensity and contrast should be adjusted accordingly.

To get still more perfection in the photo quality, a little play can be carried with the opacity and blend modes. Finally it is very essential to save a copy of this photo in desired format.

These procedures would help in case of portrait images, family photos. The new updated adobe version offers masking bug option, which makes the work still easier. Even though this involves some steps this is easier when compared to the older versions.

Masking a photo to cover irregularities is of much use in many areas of the field. All this comes out of the creativity in the humans. Any utility can be applied for maximal utilization only through continuous practice and research works.

1 Response to "Mask a Photo to Cover Irregularities"

  1. Anonymous August 10, 2012 at 9:01 AM
    Your image works beautifully with the mask Nancy!

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