How To: Use Content-Aware Fill to Restore an Old Photograph

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Repairing and restoring old or historic photos is often a labor of love, requiring time and patience to bring faded, cracked, and damaged images back to life. Adobe Photoshop’s classic restoration tools have been the Clone Stamp and the Healing Brush, but now, with the introduction of Content Aware Fill and Content Aware Spot Healing in CS5, Adobe has added more to its powerful arsenal to rid your images of dust, mold, cracks, and rips. These fabulous tools can help rebuild and repair even the most challenging images. Found in the Edit > Fill dialogue and in the Spot Healing tool, Content Aware technology is an advanced replacing feature that analyzes the image and seamlessly substitutes new texture and tone for unwanted image information. Of course, no software package alone has the essential features that the most challenging image restoration requires: patience, dedication, time, and the careful eye to rebuild and repair damage caused by careless handling, poor storage, or unforeseen natural disasters.