How to Retouch Old Photographs Using Photoshop?

Last week I got a message from one of my friends, saying 'Technical beauty tip - If you want to remove pimples, marks and signs of ageing...... try Adobe Photoshop. It really works.' I had a good laugh after reading the message, for I was expecting that she was about to give me some beauty tips. Though meant to be a joke, in fact it is TRUE. Adobe Photoshop really does wonders. Photographs are memories. They are our link to the past. We all preserve old photographs just to cling on to the memories of 'the good old days'. There would be so many photos which, by passage of time has become dull and damaged. Old photos are prone to scratches, tears, folds and all sorts of damages. Photoshop is believed to be the only solution to bring back life into such photos. Photoshop provides a wide variety of tools with which you can produce impressive, though deceptive, results. First take a new layer of the image keeping the original one intact, so that you don't damage the original in the process. Work on the layer. If the background in a photo is damaged you can remove it and replace it with a new background, for this you can use the extract option in filter menu. The extract tool will help you to search for edges and removes everything else from the picture. For basic touch ups the clone tool can be used. You can reduce wrinkles by using the healing brush tool which is the best photo retouching tool in Photoshop. Using colour replacement tool you can modify the colour in the photo. You can colour a black and white photo with the brush tool. Remove blemishes using spot healing brush. Use photo filters to adjust light in your image. With the smudge tool you can fix any tears in your photos. It can also rectify blemishes caused by moisture and sun damage. The brightness and contrast can be adjusted in such a way that you can get a crisp clear picture. You can adjust skin tones in a photo, make the background brighter, remove hair from the face, repair torn photos, and remove blemishes and stains and much more. Thanks to Photoshop. The main advantage of working with Photoshop is that it works in layers and you can delete any changes you made in the layer, without damaging the original.