To many of us, our photographs are among our most treasured possessions, so it makes sense to ensure they last forever.

Modern digital photos have a big advantage over their older counterparts, because being stored in the digital format means they aren’t going to deteriorate. But what do you do if you have older photos you want to look after? Well in today’s blog we look at some small ways you can make a difference.

The best way you can ensure these photos last is to have them digitised. There are many photo specialists that provide this service or alternatively, if you have a scanner you can do it yourself.

The best thing about this is that once you have your photos digitised, you can have prints made, share them with family members who may like a copy and store them in several different locations. Which brings up an important point, don’t forget to back up your photos! Burn them onto CDs or put them on a USB drive, just so you have a failsafe should something happen to your computer.

Another great feature of digitising your old photos is that you have the chance to touch them up, here’s a quick guide to fixing some common problems using PhotoShop.

Colour
Age often gives pictures a different hue to how they appeared originally (it normally makes them yellower) yet this is a relatively easy thing to fix. By selecting the desaturate option in PhotoShop (Images>Adjustments) you will see an almost instant change in your picture (see our example below).

If you’d like to play with this a little further then open the levels (Images>Adjustments) and experiment with the settings until you achieve a result you like.

Marks
Old photos get marked, be it by stains, folds, creases or signs of wear. Now, while obviously some of these are harder to fix than others. with a little patience and a careful eye you can fix most problems. In our example we’re going to look at the wear on the left beside the path and the crease through the head of the woman in the back row.

To repair this, you will need to use the clone stamp tool. This simple tool takes a section of image and stamps it over another. If you place the stamp near to the mark, stamp it and then ‘copy’ this over the affected area you should be able to cover the mistake. While faces can be tricky and require a bit of careful work, areas like the grass are relatively easy. Zooming in can make this process much easier.

Don’t forget, a lot of today’s blog also applies to slides, videos and film rolls too.

Got any photo saving tips? Share them below.

Tomorrow’s topic: Products you didn’t know you needed
We have a look at some useful and useless products you never knew you needed (and perhaps still won't).