Bringing back the old glory...

I recently discovered a new hobby. A new nook in the vast landscape of photography: restoring old black and white pictures and while I'm at it: creating a whole new look and feel.

 

I got inspired by watching this video of Serge Ramelli. He mentioned this great website with old black and white images. After this video I had a go myself and I loved it! It's a great way to practise your skills in Lightroom and Photoshop. 

So I started with this black and white image.

With some adjustments in Photshop and Lightroom it came out like this.

Quite a difference right? Let's do another one:

I started with removing the frame of the picture (using the crop tool). Then I opened the Camera Raw Filter (Filter > Camera Raw Filter). This basically has the same functionality as Lightroom. 

In the menu I started with removing all the color to make it a truly black and white image. Then I changed Contrast and the Highlights and shadows. After that I worked with the Black and Whites. Basically I just followed my usual workflow in LIghtroom. For this particular image I boosted the clarity. 

As I wasn't completely satisfied with the result just yet, I added some radial filters and closed the picture with a graduated filter on the top and the bottom. Voila, this is the end result. From this: 

To this:

Too much fun to end it hear: let's do another one. 

Yep, after opening in Photoshop, I started with the Camera Raw Filters. Then I cleaned the sky with the Dust and scratches filter (Filter > Dust & Scratches) and the Spot healing brush tool. And than a little vignette just because I like vignettes every once in a while. I thought it kinda suited this image. 

And here's the result: 

Just a couple more examples of pics I worked with in Lightroom/Photoshop: 

So have a go. Don't be afraid to experiment. 

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