Restoring Old Photos: Brush Tool vs. Clone Stamp Tool

Do you have old family photos that are cracked or discolored? It's easier than you think to restore them in Photoshop, and MUCH cheaper than hiring someone else to do it.

If you possess a basic knowledge of Photoshop, your first instinct might be to use the brush tool to paint over imperfections, using a foreground color that you've picked up from the photograph. However, the clone stamp tool is a much better choice. The clone stamp tool allows you to more easily select color from the photograph. When you are working to restore an old photograph, you will have to change the color you're using to cover imperfections constantly. Furthermore, the clone stamp tool selects more than color; it creates a "stamp" of any textures in the selected area as well.

Even black-and-white photos have subtle changes in color and texture within even one square inch. When you need to cover an imperfection, you'll get much better results if you use the clone stamp tool to select color from a section as physically close as possible to the section of the photo you want to restore. The brush tool will only duplicate color  not textures.