Often times people have older photographs in albums or frames that become damaged by the sun or wear and tear. It is easy to restore these cherished photographs thanks to the technology available through the computer and photo editing software, including Adobe Photoshop.

Photoshop Elements is a program that is easy to learn. Elements has tools available that helps restore photographs. One of these tools is the Dust and Scratch Filter which is used to remove marks, scratches and blots on your old photos. You can find the Dust and Scratch Filter on the Menu Bar under the Filter Tab. A drop down menu lists your choices where you want to click on the Noise tab and then Dust and Scratches.

After clicking on the Dust and Scratches menu, a pop up window opens that has two control sliders. The first slider option is called the Radius and the other one is called the Threshold. If the preview box is checked you may also have another window open. The main options we use when restoring photos are radius and threshold.

You can try to adjust the Radius slider which may remove the scratches. Please be aware that overdoing it may make the edges blurred as well. If blurring happens you can adjust the Threshold slider. This should allow the details to return and make the picture clearer with the scratches disappearing. You should be careful not to set the sliders too far or you will only create blotches on the picture.

To get rid of any marks you want to highlight only the part of the photo where the scratches are located, not the entire photograph. To highlight these areas you use the Lasso tool.

Once the damaged areas are fixed you can use the feather tool to soften the edges of the selected area so that the fixed area will not be obvious on the picture. To use the feather tool you choose the Feather option and then the Scratch and Dust Filter. You may want to do the radius and threshold adjustment process again to get the correct texture and make sure all the scratches and marks are removed.

To finish the restoration process and make the photograph appear professional I recommend you crop the image to remove any rips or torn edges. You can also use the canvas to equally crop the image.

You can also add drama to your picture by adding a drop shadow. Drop shadows make the photo appear as if it has been lifted off the page. You can remove color from the photo using tools Shift+Ctrl+U. Once it is black and white you can then add color by putting a little amount of Sepia. This is done on the Hue or Saturation tab. The contrast may be adjusted using the Levels option.

This is only one very easy way to remove blotches and marks on an old picture. It is also a good way to make the picture look new but still appear classical. It will be a pleasant and easy way to display pictures kept on old albums and cabinets for a long time.

Photoshop software is ideal if you want to retouch digital images, apply special effects to your images and will also help you prepare photographs for the web. If you need to resize images, add filters and styles, Adobe Photoshop is the software for you.

Adobe has created many different forms of Photoshop, but the for the amateur photographer or the professional who is new to digital photography Elements 2 is very easy to understand and comes with a low price tag and a host of creative tools that help with image manipulation.

If you wish to retouch your image there are a massive amount of choices of brushes available in Photoshop. Images can be changed by painting with the brushes over the area you want to change. Red eye in a photo can be removed in less than two minutes. You can also remove unwanted items from an image. If you have photos that have poor quality there is a sharp tool to sharpen certain areas of an image.

You have the ability to save your images in any one of 15 types of file formats, giving you the possibility of creating images for a variety of different projects. This includes images for the web, for slideshows, and for many different forms of printing.

Elements can also create images specifically for the web. Preparing your images for your website is simple and easy with Photoshop Elements. It also helps you to resize and compress images that are being attached to an e-mail.

Using HTML creating a web gallery can be a lot of work but with Photoshop Elements you can open a group of images, resize them, create a thumbnail gallery and create all the navigation HTML buttons for your site. It also creates a folder for your web files and saves it on your computer.

Elements 2 also contains a slide show, which is a convenient way of presenting images. Slideshow presentations are saved in PDF format making them easy to e-mail or download. To view a slideshow you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer.

Also included in Photoshop is a video frame capture tool. This allows you to capture any frame from a video and save it as a stand-alone image. Images created for frame capture can be edited the same as any standard image.

Where the need to edit colour is great, Photoshop has a wide range of tools that will help. Colour images can be turned into black and white shots in less than five minutes. You can also add filters to images to warm them up or create different tones.

The most important feature of Photoshop is the Toolbox. The Toolbox contains all the editing tools that you need in order to burn, dodge, clone, blur, sharpen or smudge an image. This box also contains handy tools to crop and zoom in on an image.

There are many artists worldwide who make a living by retouching images with advanced image software. Learning how to use Photoshop correctly will be a massive help to your digital photography, and if you are a keen photographer it should become part of your digital darkroom.