How to Fix Faded Photos Easily?

Read time 6 minutes

Many of us often reminisce about our cherished memories, particularly those involving our ancestors, by perusing printed photographs. These images were the prevailing medium for capturing precious moments during that era. People used to carefully store these photographs in albums or simply keep them in envelopes. Special occasions like weddings and ceremonies were documented and preserved in these albums. While we yearn to revisit these pictures, it’s impossible to ignore the prevalent issue of faded photos that many of us encounter today. Even older photos, including those safely tucked away in albums, are not immune to the effects of time, leading to gradual fading. However, it’s important to note that faded photos can be revitalized, and this blog aims to elucidate the methods for accomplishing this restoration.

Why do photos get faded?

Are you curious about the causes of faded photos? There are several factors at play, including the interaction of sunlight with the dyes or colors in the photo print, exposure to humidity, and other environmental influences. Faded photos are often characterized by the loss of vibrant colors, a shift to gray tones, the emergence of yellow or brown spots, and even the complete disappearance of the image.

Listed below are some preventive measures aimed at safeguarding your vintage photographs for the future. These measures are designed to prevent your old photos from deteriorating over time.

• Ensure that your photos are stored in a location away from direct sunlight, moisture, smoke, fireworks, and exposure to air.
• Safeguard your cherished old photos by digitizing them and saving them on your computer or storage system to prevent any potential damage.
• Preserve your photos by placing them in high-quality albums in a cool, dark, and moisture-free environment.
• Create backups of your precious old images to mitigate the risks of damage, fading, or other forms of distortion.

Presently, we are confronted with the task of addressing photos that have already experienced fading, and we must rectify them by implementing viable solutions.

Please inform us of your approach to restoring your aging, discolored photographs and bringing out their original beauty. Manual intervention alone won’t suffice; we require specific tools to rectify issues such as color degradation, pigmentation, brightness, alignment, contrast, and more.

You can rely on robust image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop, Paintshop, GIMP, and more to help restore faded photos and create high-quality digital images suitable for printing at your convenience. Also, you can repair or fix grainy photos in different ways. Now, we will see how to repair and restore damaged and lost photos in Photoshop.

In order to utilize any of the image editing tools to restore old, faded photographs, it’s essential to begin with a digital scan of the original image. We strongly advise selecting a high-quality digital camera, mobile device, or scanner with a high resolution to ensure a trouble-free scanning process. Capture excellent scans of your aged, faded photos and save them on your computer for future restoration efforts. Now, let’s explore additional solutions for enhancing these faded images.

Adobe Photoshop is a widely recognized image editing software compatible with both Windows and Mac operating systems. It is capable of adjusting image settings, removing imperfections from images, and restoring aged and faded photographs.

The functionality of the tool varies somewhat when working with vintage black and white images compared to colored ones. We will outline the essential steps for enhancing both types of images.

Monochrome images typically experience a loss of black intensity, causing black elements to diminish, while white elements tend to shift towards a shade of gray. Nevertheless, this issue can often be remedied by employing a robust image editing tool like Adobe Photoshop.

• Install Adobe Photoshop on your system. Open your black & white faded image with Photoshop.
• Navigate to Layer>>New Adjustment Layer>>Curves.
• On the left panel, select the black-point eye dropper. Then, apply it to the areas of the image that you believe should be black by clicking on those regions. This action will correct any faded black colors in the image.
• Next, within the identical Properties box, choose the white-point eye dropper. Employ it in a similar manner on the sections you wish to appear as white.
• To mitigate this impact, navigate to the “Layers” menu, select the curve, and adjust its opacity to approximately 90 percent using the available options.
• For achieving perfection, navigate to the “Layer” menu, then select “New Adjustment Layer,” and finally choose “Hue/Saturation.” In the Saturation section, adjust the saturation level to 0 by sliding it all the way to the left.
• Now, the image will look much better than before.

The faded colored images can also be corrected like the above method using black-point eye and white-point eye. But remember here, you should border the main figure within the photo. Then from Layer>>New Adjustment>>Hue/Saturation, check out the correct coloring in image by sliding the slider under Hue option until you get the correct coloring in that image. Usually, you can find the correct value between -45 to +45.

So, we have experienced the Adobe Photoshop way to fix the faded images.

Paintshop Pro includes a convenient feature called Fade Correction, which enables quick color restoration for faded images with just one click. In this guide, we’ll show you how to locate and utilize the Fade Correction tool within Paintshop Pro.

• Begin by launching Paintshop Pro, the version you have installed on your computer. Once it’s up and running, proceed to open the image that appears faded.
• Now, head over to the “Adjust” menu and give it a click. From there, go to “Color” and select “Fade Correction.”
• The software will perform an automatic correction, but you also have the option to customize the correction settings to meet your specific needs.
• Hence, the image is finally restored to its original color.

Certainly, you can access these two widely recognized and reliable online tools at any time to enhance your faded images using the methods described above. Additionally, there are other valuable image editing options available in the market, such as Pixlr and GIMP, which can address various issues such as blurriness, discoloration, distortion, and breakage.

Some photos are not accessible due to corruption or other issues like damaged structure, broken image file extensions, etc. And the best way to fix this issue is repairing them instantly using the Kernel Photo Repair software. The professional software is programmed with advanced algorithms and repairs all sort of inaccessible, corrupt, lost photos in a minute. It supports all image file formats and images from almost all devices including high quality professional cameras. You can get the trial of this tool for free from the website.

Summing Up

This blog provides detailed explanations on the most effective methods for restoring old and faded photographs. Additionally, it introduces a superb photo repair tool designed to assist users in rectifying various types of photo damage and corruption.