Adobe Photoshop - Clone Stamp Tool

1. Prepare your old photograph

The top of our photograph is very badly damaged so we're going to crop it to remove that area of the picture, which is mostly background.

To do this: Open Photoshop. Select the Crop tool. Click with the left hand button of your mouse and draw a square around the area of your photo you want to crop; when you're happy with your selection click the green tick icon.

2. Fix minor imperfections with the Spot Healing Brush

Photoshop Elements' 'Spot Healing Brush' tool is ideal for removing minor imperfections from photographs such as the scratches at the bottom right hand corner of our picture.

Zoom in on the area you want to repair with the scroll wheel of your mouse. Click on the Spot Healing Brush icon. Now, hold down the left hand button of your mouse and drag it across the area of the picture that you want to fix.

The tool fills in the damaged area of the screen based on nearby sections of the image. Repeat this process for all the minor blemishes.

3. Major improvements using the Clone Stamp tool

The Spot Healing Brush is no good for bigger areas of damage such as around the top right of the photograph and on the man's tie. To fix these areas we need to use the Clone Stamp tool - you can use this to copy an area of the photograph and paste it somewhere else to repair it.

Click the Clone Stamp Tool to select it. In the main menu bar there's a selection of brushes, we've chosen a medium-sized Basic Brush for our repairs.

4. Copy and paste

Position your cursor in the area of the picture you want to copy. Hold down the Alt key and click with the left-hand button of your mouse. The cursor will change to an icon that looks like a target.

Position your mouse over the damaged area and click again to paste the copied section of the image. Repeat until you've repaired all the damaged areas. You can use the clone tool to remove unwanted elements of your picture such as the woman and child in our picture.

6. Finishing touches

Once you've repaired the damaged areas, click the IMAGE-->Image Adjustments tab within Photoshop . Here there are tools that'll automatically adjust aspects such as the shadows, saturation, hue and temperature. Click 'Auto' or use the slider. When you're happy with the result save it for the Web as .JPG between 75% and 100% of quality