Which software for restoring old photos?

I want to start a project for family and relatives. I have a few albums/boxes of family photographs. Most are very old. A few negatives, but not many.
I'll be scanning the photos with my Epson V600. Some will need fixing - scratches, creases, dirt stains, will have to be removed (or reduced).
Also I need to enhance the IQ in other ways.

So what s.w. to begin with? Over the holidays I bought Affinity and DXO PhotoLab Elite at a discount. Have not had much time to spend using either.
Is one better than the other for restoring photos? Or should I consider other s.w.? Most restoration tutorials on the net use LR/PS.

Perfectly Frank wrote in post #19260569
I want to start a project for family and relatives. I have a few albums/boxes of family photographs. Most are very old. A few negatives, but not many.
I'll be scanning the photos with my Epson V600. Some will need fixing - scratches, creases, dirt stains, will have to be removed (or reduced).
Also I need to enhance the IQ in other ways.

So what s.w. to begin with? Over the holidays I bought Affinity and DXO PhotoLab Elite at a discount. Have not had much time to spend using either.
Is one better than the other for restoring photos? Or should I consider other s.w.? Most restoration tutorials on the net use LR/PS.

I use Lightroom/Photoshop. I am good with Lightroom and just use Photoshop for scratches, creases, stains etc. Also use Denoise and Sharpen AI when needed. I am more than pleased with the results.

It may sound funny (or not) but I usually use other plug ins or SW to add defects or other characteristics to images and Photoshop to remove them...

Most any software can

• correct exposure or contrast
  
• fix (to a limted degree) white brightness issues in JOG
  
• compensated (to some degree) for color fading
  

For old photos, I actually use my camera as a scanner then work on the resulting digital image.

I have found that each image I have worked on need different filters and TLC. Sometimes you deal with just poor images, or bad exposures, or the aging process on a photo. The last one I did, they wanted it enlarged from an old 1970s 4x6 to an 8x10 and colors enhanced around the background rainbow in the sky. That took some time!

It's good you don't have too many negatives, a negative scanner can be around $100-200, and good ones go for twice that.

Thanks for the ideas.
I've been thinking this over and decided that instead of Affinity or programs made just for photo restoration (ie, Photo Retoucher, Photo Works) I'd grab
the bull by the horns and sign up with the Adobe Photography Plan (20GB).

I'm sure Affinity and DXO PL would work just fine, but I've always been intrigued with LR/PS after reading so much about it.
Many people consider it the gold standard in post-processing software. So I have to give it a try. Now let the learning begin!

Perfectly Frank wrote in post #19261396
Thanks for the ideas.
I've been thinking this over and decided that instead of Affinity or programs made just for photo restoration (ie, Photo Retoucher, Photo Works) I'd grab
the bull by the horns and sign up with the Adobe Photography Plan (20GB).

I'm sure Affinity and DXO PL would work just fine, but I've always been intrigued with LR/PS after reading so much about it.
Many people consider it the gold standard in post-processing software. So I have to give it a try. Now let the learning begin!

You can't beat the Anthony Morganti tutorials on you tube. He takes you step by step on how to use the program (Lightroom). You can also go to his website which redirects you to the youtube videos. He also does Photoshop. These will get you started and for specific ways to restore photos then searching on youtube will be helpful. Good luck and have fun!

sogs wrote in post #19261789
You can't beat the Anthony Morganti tutorials on you tube. He takes you step by step on how to use the program (Lightroom). You can also go to his website which redirects you to the youtube videos. He also does Photoshop. These will get you started and for specific ways to restore photos then searching on youtube will be helpful. Good luck and have fun!

Hey, thanks for that. You're right, his material is very good. I'm watching Anthony's LR quick start video now.
PHLearn has a wealth of information, too. But for now I'll stick with Anthony.

I can recommend a nice program for post-editing. https://www.movavi.com​/ -- try out Picverse, very easy to use.

Katrin Eismann put out a couple of photo restoration books several years ago with techniques using Photoshop. Still relevant in retouching photos. I'd guess she's probably got some newer stuff out as well using LR.

D Thompson wrote in post #19262660
Katrin Eismann put out a couple of photo restoration books several years ago with techniques using Photoshop. Still relevant in retouching photos. I'd guess she's probably got some newer stuff out as well using LR.

Looks interesting. Put on my amazon wish list.

I have been converting my old analog library for quite a few years now. I have found that PS is by fer the best tool out there though I'm sure any decent photo editing software will do. There are a few tools in PS that really make the job easier like such as the content aware fill tool which makes cloning out dust/scratches a breeze.

To get the data, I too have given up on using a flatbed scanner preferring my SLR as the quality is so much better. There was a thread a while ago about negative scanning HERE that discussed scanning in some detail. I ran some experiments comparing quality and was quite surprised at how poor flatbeds are. See post #22, #28. I also picked up a package from Negative Lab Pro that really helps in converting negatives and getting the best from them.

For those of you taking a digital image with your current camera, what is your process? I would like to try that as I have some old photos around.

duckster wrote in post #19262905
For those of you taking a digital image with your current camera, what is your process? I would like to try that as I have some old photos around.

I don't think I have a real process, so much depends on the material. For prints, it's no different than any other photo, light the print well, set camera settings as needed, focus well and take a picture.For slides and negatives, I built a crude negative holder and light source. It's not pretty but works well. Then it's the same as with prints, frame it, set the camera and take a picture.

So, for example, do you place the photo on a table and take a picture from above?