HOW TO.....

Beginners Guide to Fixing Faded Washed Out Images

Whether you had old faded photos or slides converted to digital, or if your digital camera just didn't have the right settings, you can end up with a faded washed out digital image. Luckily, it isn't that difficult to fix to faded images. It just requires a few simple steps to bring the life back into your digital image.

There are two main issues with this image, contrast & color saturation. There are different techniques to adjust contrast & color saturation, but I will show you one of the simplest ways.

Contrast

The contrast of a picture is the difference between the white & the black in an image. As you can see in the before photo the darkest points to the image need to be darker. Using the free software Pixlr you go to 'Adjustments' on the toolbar and you will see 'Brightness & Contrast'. There will be a sliding scale where you can add both brightness & contrast to an image. Remember that contrast makes the darker parts of the image darker, and the brightness will make the whiter parts of the image whiter.

Saturation

This is my favorite adjustment, I think it just breathes so much life into digital images by adding a bit of extra color.

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