Cleaning up photographs
December 28, 2024 11:51 PM   Subscribe

I'm putting together a funeral slideshow for my father. A friend has scanned some older pictures for me, but some of them could do with sharpening or colour correction. Here and here for instance, and maybe a couple of others in that album. Is there easy to use software for this? Windows or iPad either fine, just as intuitive as possible as I don't know what I'm doing. Thanks for any suggestions.
posted by paduasoy to Technology (6 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Do you have any budget for this? Since you say you don’t know what you’re doing and there is presumably a time limit for whenever the funeral is, and you are also dealing with the death of a parent, I would highly recommend paying a freelancer from Fiverr or Upwork or a similar sort of commission to do the retouching for you. Photo correction requires a subtle touch and especially for something like a remembrance slideshow you’ll want consistency as well. This sort of job is very common and is absolutely the kind of thing photographers and digital artists do all the time, especially for events like funerals. But when you are unfamiliar with the software it’s much harder and takes far longer, leading to frustration which you totally don’t need right now.

However, if there is no budget and you really feel like the pictures need work, you might like Snapseed. You might also just enjoy learning some new skills, and Snapseed is a pretty solid introduction to a lot of foundational photo editing concepts. You have some lovely photos of your father and I’m sorry for your loss.
posted by Mizu at 12:57 AM on December 29, 2024 [1 favorite]


Have you already tried playing around with the editing tools built into iPad Photos? Under the edit button (it may look like three slide switches) you’ve got settings for sharpness, tint, saturation etc. Work on a copy to avoid accidentally messing up the originals. Forgive me if you know all this. The results won’t be as good as a professional would achieve, but the price is right and for your needs it might be enough.

This is what I did with pictures for my mother’s funeral.
posted by Phanx at 3:10 AM on December 29, 2024


I've used AI apps for this purpose. Here's your first photo processed through Pica AI. Granted, it looks a bit artificial, but it's possible that if you played with some parameters and/or tried a different app the photo might look better. Pica lets you do a limited number of photos for free, but then you have to pay. (Note that I'm not necessarily saying that Pica is the best app for this purpose -- it's just the one that I've used in the past.)
posted by alex1965 at 6:01 AM on December 29, 2024


Following up on my previous comment: If you'd rather have a professional work on your photographs, you might consider hiring John Sternig at Perception LLC. I've used him a number of times in the past, and his work has always been excellent (I don't get any kick-backs for recommending him).
posted by alex1965 at 6:16 AM on December 29, 2024 [1 favorite]


Best answer: I use Snapseed on my phone for quick retouches. It's not super simple, but it's pretty intuitive and easy to try different things. On the other hand, it's also easy to make photos look worse.

But... I think they're actually great as-is, especially for this purpose. If you don't mind the vibe of "flipping through an old photo album", then the uncorrected photos seem just fine.
posted by BungaDunga at 12:42 PM on December 29, 2024


Response by poster: Thanks, all. We have gone with them as-is.
posted by paduasoy at 12:45 PM on December 29, 2024


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