What is best Programme to help me restore old photo's

[arthurk]

I decided to give PhotoPad a miss. On looking at their support forums I found some complaints that after a period of time (a) some features are removed and replaced with adverts for the paid version; (b) a watermark is placed on edited photos. It may be that these people had been on a free trial of the full product rather than the explicitly free one, but I decided I could do without the possible hassle.

Instead I decided to have another look at Paint.net, which I first tried some years ago. I thought maybe it was time to have another go at layers (offered by both this and PhotoPad, but not the free programs I've been using recently), but something else which I like to use from time to time is a Transform (or de-skewing) tool. PhotoPad doesn't have this, but it's available as a plug-in for Paint.net. It's early days and I'm still getting used to the interface, but it seems it will do anything that I'm likely to want of it, either as-is or with one of the hundreds of plug-ins.

[Treetotal]

Nice one Arthur. keep us posted on your progress 
Carol

[arthurk]

Wnsoft are part of the web.com Group whoever they might happen to be.

Can you provide a source for that? As far as I can see, web.com is simply a web hosting and design company and domain registrar.

The domains wnsoft.com and the associated forum pteavstudio.com are registered through Gandi, a French company, but as I said before, the registrant (ie the person who owns the domains) is in Russia:

https://www.whois.com/whois/wnsoft.com

https://www.whois.com/whois/pteavstudio.com

[guest189040]

Wnsoft are part of the web.com Group whoever they might happen to be.

Can you provide a source for that? As far as I can see, web.com is simply a web hosting and design company and domain registrar.

The domains wnsoft.com and the associated forum pteavstudio.com are registered through Gandi, a French company, but as I said before, the registrant (ie the person who owns the domains) is in Russia:

https://www.whois.com/whois/wnsoft.com

https://www.whois.com/whois/pteavstudio.com

That is what I found but as I have said I find the software to be pretty good and for me it has not resulted in any problems with my Laptop and virus software does not show that there is any issue with wnsoft.

If you are concerned about introducing issues into your computer then my advice would be to avoid all free software and subscribe to Adobe’s Photography Plan to get Photoshop, and Lightroom which are the industry standards.

[arthurk]

If you are concerned about introducing issues into your computer then my advice would be to avoid all free software and subscribe to Adobe’s Photography Plan to get Photoshop, and Lightroom which are the industry standards.

You are joking, I take it. I've already said enough about my level of expertise for you to know that I'm not a professional and have no need for "industry standards" software. To be more specific:

(a) I neither want nor need to use a cloud-based product
(b) Last time I used Photoshop Express it installed an image organiser program which I neither wanted nor needed, giving me no choice in the matter, and it kept nagging me to subscribe to a cloud product - if that's not an "issue on my computer" I don't know what is
(c) Current starting price for Photography Plan is £9.98 a month

I simply don't do enough photo editing to justify that kind of product or that level of ongoing expenditure, and if a free product or reasonably-priced purchase meets my needs I will use it. However, I do like to know the origin of my software: some developers are perfectly open about this, and others less so. The less they reveal the more cautious I become; it's sometimes said that if you get something for nothing, you become the product, so I always like to know who I'm giving myself to. With Pixbuilder/WNSoft that has so far not been possible.

[cuffie81]

Might I suggest another option, Affinity Photo, from Serif. It's relatively inexpensive at about £50 and Serif regularly run sales with big discounts. Upgrades are free and they have an active support forum (mostly users helping other users) and a number of video tutorials on YouTube and Vimeo.

There are quite a few videos on YouTube, by 3rd parties, on photo restoration using Affinity Photo.

As a long time user of Paint.NET I found it wasn't so simple when dealing with photo restorations, particularly scratches and creases, which I think it probably due to its lack of a healing tool/brush (or maybe it was just my incompetence). Paint.NET has a clone stamp but I don't find it as easy or quick to use. A lot of commercial software has a healing tool/brush (and similar tools) but quite often free software doesn't (Gimp being one of the exceptions).

[guest189040]

If you are concerned about introducing issues into your computer then my advice would be to avoid all free software and subscribe to Adobe’s Photography Plan to get Photoshop, and Lightroom which are the industry standards.

You are joking, I take it. I've already said enough about my level of expertise for you to know that I'm not a professional and have no need for "industry standards" software. To be more specific:

(a) I neither want nor need to use a cloud-based product
(b) Last time I used Photoshop Express it installed an image organiser program which I neither wanted nor needed, giving me no choice in the matter, and it kept nagging me to subscribe to a cloud product - if that's not an "issue on my computer" I don't know what is
(c) Current starting price for Photography Plan is £9.98 a month

I simply don't do enough photo editing to justify that kind of product or that level of ongoing expenditure, and if a free product or reasonably-priced purchase meets my needs I will use it. However, I do like to know the origin of my software: some developers are perfectly open about this, and others less so. The less they reveal the more cautious I become; it's sometimes said that if you get something for nothing, you become the product, so I always like to know who I'm giving myself to. With Pixbuilder/WNSoft that has so far not been possible.

The Adobe plan is not necessarily Cloud Based, it is part of what is called Creative Cloud.

If you want the best then this is it.

BTW, all my files reside on my Computer and not on the server owned by Adobe.

You have been given great advice from all here and what you do is up to you.

My advice ceases

[arthurk]

The Adobe plan is not necessarily Cloud Based, it is part of what is called Creative Cloud.

Silly me, thinking that something with Cloud in its name is primarily a cloud-based product. I can't think how I made that mistake.

But that's not my main objection to it. Having already paid upfront for what I accept might be a good standalone desktop program (Photoshop Elements - you'll recall that I do own a copy and used it on a previous PC), I resent the continual assumption that I might want to start paying £10 a month for a subscription-based service which offers little or nothing extra that I actually want.

[Christaelrod]

Hi there I have a number of old pictures of relatives. What is best Programme to help me restore or improve please... I am not a computer whizz so simple is middle name!
Also is there a member support to assist in a trial to improve see attachment... Thanks

Opinions will differ, but Adobe Photoshop Elements is very good. A similar free downloadable programme is Gimp, but it takes a lot of getting used to - I don't find it easy at all. Alternatively, you could post them on the Photo Restoration board here, and I guarantee you'll get lots of good restores to choose from.

Mike

Our team's all-time-favorite photo post processing tool is Photoshop. As Mike suggested that the choice of software differ from person to person, so you should select the software based on your convenience.