Table of Content
    Photo Repair

    How to Fix Damaged Photos in Photoshop


    Table of Content

      Summary: This blog post shares how you can fix color, brightness, and other noise in your damaged pictures in Photoshop. It also outlines a specialized photo repair software to fix severe corruption in pictures of any format.

      Your yearning to shoot pitch-perfect photos may go unfulfilled due to a shortfall in the camera’s imaging calibre or other technicalities of the craft. Probably, your camera settings were not up to mark or there wasn’t sufficient lighting at the time of shoot. Due to these reasons, photos may turn out grainy, blurry, dark with strange spots, dull, or have other shortcomings.

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      Photoshop is a great solution for such issues in photos- it can fix damaged photos and make them look better.

      In this blog post, we’ll share the key features of Photoshop that you can use to fix the color, brightness, and other noise in your damaged pictures. We’ll also outline a specialized photo repair software that can fix severe corruption in images including RAW file formats.

      How to fix damaged photos by using Photoshop

      fix damaged photos in photoshop

      Photoshop can fix damaged and distorted photos. The raster graphics editor reduces color and luminance noise along with correcting other flaws such as red eye, blemishes, spots, etc. in the photos.

      Watch this video to know how to repair a damaged photo in Photoshop

      Use the below methods in the latest Photoshop CC, CS6, CS5, and lower versions.

      Methods to fix damaged photos in Photoshop:

      1. Use Noise reduction filters
      2. Use Lab Color Mode
      3. Use Photoshop retouch & repair tools
      1. Use Noise reduction filters

      What you can fix: Spots, grains, dots of red, green, and blue, color fringing, halos, shadows, pixelation, luminance noise (black, white, and grey dots), banding etc. in photos

      Colored artifacts or distortion in your photos mostly occur due to wrong camera or light settings. Noise filters in Photoshop are the best way to remove such color issues in the images.

      Photoshop offers two mode to reduce noise in the pictures – basic and advanced. If you don’t get satisfactory results in the basic mode, try the advanced version.

      How to reduce Noise in Basic mode in Photoshop

      reduce noise in basic mode in photoshop
      • In the top bar select and follow Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise
      • Zoom in and out the area from where you want to reduce noise with the + / – button below the image preview
      • On the right pane, select Basic
      reduce noise in Photoshop Select basic
      • Adjust the Strength, Preserve Details, Reduce Color Noise, and Sharpen Details sliders. Try various combination settings to get the balanced picture
      • Preview the results after check-in the Remove JPEG Artifact box
      • Click OK on top
      Note: Some Photoshop filters that you can use to reduce various types of noise in photos – Despeckle, Dust & Scratches, Reduce Noise, Sharpen, and Sharpen Edges.

      How to reduce Noise in Advanced mode in Photoshop [

      reduce noise in Advanced mode in photoshop
      • In the top bar select and follow Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise
      • Select Advanced
      • Select Per Channel tab
      • Select the Channel one by one and adjust the Strength and Preserve Details sliders for each
      • Preview the changes and click OK

      2. Use Lab Color Mode

      What you can fix:  Luminance noise – brightness issues, black, white, and grey dots in the photo

      Luminance noise affects the brightness in the photos. It occurs due to inappropriate light and ISO settings during the shoot.

      How to reduce Luminance Noise with Lab Color Mode

      reduce luminance noise with lab color mode
      • In Photoshop menu, go to Image>Mode>Lab Color
      • Go to Layers, create a copy of layer by dragging the current image background layer to the Create New Layer icon seen below
      • Go to the Channels tab, create a copy of Lightness channel by dragging the current channel to the Create New Channel icon seen below. Name the new channel so as not to confuse with the original one while making changes.
      • Channels tab has the Lightness channel (for brightness) and channel a and b (for colors). Click on the Lightness channel, adjust the respective values to reduce the luminance noise

      3. Use Photoshop retouch & repair tools

      What you can fix: The old damaged photos, blemishes, spots, red eye, etc.

      Photoshop offers a variety of retouch and repair tools to improve and enhance the damaged photos. You can easily fix imperfections such as red eye, spots, blemishes, scratches, etc. in your pictures. The retouch and repair tools are boon for photographers who need to repair their client’s old damaged photos.

      Some of the efficient Photoshop retouch and repair tools are Clone Stamp tool, Healing Brush tool, Spot Healing Brush tool, The Patch tool, Red Eye tool.

      How to use Clone Stamp tool

      The Clone Stamp tool lets you to copy one area of an image over another of the same image, which has the same color mode.

      • Select the Clone Stamp tool
      • Drag it over the area of the photo you want to repair

      How to use Healing Brush tool

      The Healing Brush tool fixes imperfections. You paint with the sampled pixels from an image or pattern like in Clone Stamp. Additionally, the Healing Brush matches the texture, lighting, transparency, and shading of the sampled pixels to the pixels you are going to repair.

      • Select the Healing Brush tool icon
      • Click the brush sample and set brush options (Mode, Source, Aligned, Sample, and Diffusion)
      • Set the sampling point by placing the pointer over an area of the photo
      • The sampled pixels are blended with the existing pixels

      How to use Spot Healing Brush tool

      The Spot Healing Brush removes spots, blemishes, circles, and anomalies in your photos. It is similar to the Healing Brush but doesn’t require you to specify a sample spot. It automatically samples from around the retouched area.

      • Select the Spot Healing Brush tool  from the toolbox
      • Choose a brush size in the options bar
      • Choose Replace to preserve noise, grain, and texture at the edges of the brush stroke
      • Choose a Type option in the options bar (Proximity Match, Create Texture, Content-Aware)
      • Select Sample All Layers in the options bar. Deselect Sample All Layers to sample only from the active layer.
      • Click the area you want to repair

      How to use the Patch tool

      The Patch tool repairs a selected area with pixels from another area or a pattern. It matches the texture, lighting, and shading of the sampled pixels to the source pixels.

      • Select the Patch tool icon
      • Drag in the image to select the area you want to repair
      • Select Source in the options bar
      • To adjust the selection, shift-drag in the image to add to the existing selection
      • Adjust the Diffusion slider
      • Position the pointer inside the selection and drag the selection border to the area you want to patch
      • Release the mouse button

      How to use Red Eye tool

      The Red Eye tool removes the common red eye issue in your photos.

      • Select the Red Eye tool  in the RGB Color mode
      • Draw a box around the red eye in the image. Red eye is fixed.

      Note: You can visit helpx.adobe.com to know in detail how each can be used to repair your damaged pictures.

      Easy way to repair damaged and corrupt pictures

      Use Stellar Repair for Photo – a DIY photo repair software

      What you can fix: Repair corrupt and damaged photos including grainy, blurry, broken, pixelated, with grey bands, or giving errors. Fix issues like corrupt headers, JPEG file data, invalid JPEG file structure, etc.

      Stellar Repair for Photo provides a fast and easy way to repair corrupt, broken, or damaged photos. The best thing about this photo repair tool is that it can repair RAW file formats of all popular camera brands like Nikon, Canon, Sony, Fuji, Olympus etc. Unlike Photoshop, the software can repair multiple photos at a time. You don’t need to juggle with the functions or settings to get the desired results.

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      About The Author

      Sumona Chatterjee linkdin

      Sumona is a tech blogger, avid photographer, & technogeek with vast experience in writing about media file recovery tips and tutorials. She has over 10 years of experience in media file recovery/media file repair technology. She is passionate about Photography, Creative Designing, Music, and Exploring lesser-known destinations.

      21 comments

        1. Hi Nagendra,
          Try to save the files in a different format to avoid such corruption. You can save your image as a JPG, TIFF, PNG, or other image file format of your choice.

      1. I have got a few inquiries from my clients asking about how to actually repair corrupted files.

        I can now send them over to your article to purchase the software as when they damage their files, they usually damage the whole batch!

        I will certainly bookmark your article as I am sure at some point I will need your software to fix corrupted photo files of my own.

        Thanks for the post!

        1. Hi Chris, Thanks for reading our article and I am sure our software will repair your corrupted photos files!

      2. Hi, I had couple of photos have a brightness issues and I try to fix in Photoshop. I forget how to fix in Photoshop after read the steps the issue will resolved. Thank you very much!

      3. Hi, Thanks for provide the ways to fix damaged photos and clearing that the pixel stuff in Photoshop. I understand it much better now

      4. Hi Sumona, My Grandmother photos is very damaged, it has been in a frame for years, it is actually a copy of copy the original.. Any help would be appreciated.

        1. Hi Drew, We would like to inform you that our software works on “what you see is what you can repair”. That means the files will be repaired in the same manner as you were able to see them in the preview window after the scanning is complete.

      5. It’s good to know the ways to repair corrupt pictures and I used your software to fix couple of my holiday pics. I really appreciate it!

      6. Very nice and Clear Guide! I had just started learning Photoshop and having some problem on picture you are provides the best ways to fix damaged photos. Thank you very much!

      7. This blog help me a lot! When I try to open a photo in Photoshop elements it’s showing me error message” Could not complete the request because of a problem parsing jpeg data”. These methods is helpful to fix this problem. Thanks you very much!

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