PhotoGlory Review

We all have those old photographs from our family members that are tattered and torn, many of which are discoloured or have tears and folds or are simply just old black and white images. With the photo restoration program named PhotoGlory, you can take those photos and correct every problem you have with them. Let’s take an in depth look at the potential of this piece of software.

Introduction

Anyone who has used PhotoWorks will be instantly familiar with the interface of PhotoGlory. As can be seen, the layout is almost identical, which is great, as the software is super-simple to use.

Simply load up the image you want to work with, and click on the “Restore old photo” and “Colorize black & White photo” options. It really is that simple to get you started! After using PhotoGlory on quite a few images, I suggest cropping and straightening any images first, then if you are going to use the “Restore” option, use that first, then the “Colourize” option. Be prepared for a little wait while the images are processed, the “Restore” option is particularly slow compared to colourising the images.

One thing to be aware of though, if you are going to use the option to restore the image, as well as taking a long time to process, it actually shrinks the size of your image, giving you a smaller image size than when you started. That’s nothing to worry about if you are using the software to archive, but if you intend to reprint any images, make sure you scan the photographs at a higher DPI or increase the size of the image first in other software.

This following example is a great one to show you how to restore an old photo. As you can see from the first image, it has the original black and white image alongside the colourised version (I done it this way for this example of how it can look just colourised and with the restore option and colourised).

As you can see, from the press of just a couple of buttons, PhotoGlory has already done a fantastic job. Clicking on the “Tools” option, you can further refine the image with options to:

Crop – Used to crop the image to the size required.
Geometry (see wedding photo later) – Straighten images and adjust the vertical plain and distortion.
Change Background – If you don’t like the background in the image, you can use this to change it
Vignetting – Add a suitable vignette.
3D LUT Colour Correction – Use one of the many filters to change the look of the photo.
Noise Reduction – Easily remove noise.
Curves – Curves adjustments for precise changes to your images colours and contrast.

If your image still has damage to it, then you can move onto the “Retouch” option. This is a great option for dealing with the little things that just need to be touched up after the computer has processed the initial image. These include.

Healing Brush – Fantastic tool that will automatically fix an area such as a scratch or remove a blemish.
Clone Stamp – Clone areas of the image.
Patch – For fixing larger areas.
Colouring – Useful for colour adjustments.
Adjustment Brush – One of the most useful tools, allowing you to adjust painted parts of the image.

The “Tools” and “Retouch” options should be more than enough to get every photo looking like new, however, should you want more there is the “Effects” option that gives you a huge number of filters to change the colours and look of your image, including an impressive list of old film stocks! And if that’s not enough, you can also add text using the “Captions” option.

How did PhotoGlory perform?

I’m using PhotoGlory on a 4-year-old i5 powered Windows 10 laptop and PhotoGlory worked well. The only feature that took a little time has already been mentioned, but you can imagine the processing power that this tool is using.

The colourising module is very impressive, and compared to other similar products that I have played with, PhotoGlory performed extremely well, and showed itself to be a competent piece of software.

The only hiccup I had with the software was using the “Patch” tool, which sadly crashed on occasions, but that was the only tool that caused issues (they do know about this, and are working on a fix for those affected). This of course may be hardware specific, and to be honest, the Healing Brush and Clone Stamp are so good, the Patch tool might not be used by many in everyday use (I thoroughly tried every tool on purpose regardless if they were needed).

A strange feature is the way it reduces the size of your images when you use the “Restore old photo” feature, however, if you use the “File” option and choose “Resize & Save”, you can technically overcome this behaviour.

Conclusion

PhotoGlory really surprised me by its ability to restore old photos. It’s a fantastic program that can save you a lot of time from manually restoring old photographs.

It’s not just all artificial intelligence as once the colourising option is complete, you get the option to go in and manually adjust any corrections that need to be made. You have all the tools for a perfect photograph, without the need for hours of tutorials.

PhotoGlory should be the perfect option for anyone who wants a standalone photo restoration program that can just get the task at hand complete.

PhotoGlory is available from Photoglory.net and has a free trial to get you started. I genuinely recommend PhotoGlory as a useful tool that will help anyone who has ever tried to do this sort of thing.

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I am a semi-professional photographer who runs a weekly meeting photography group as well as numerous Facebook groups (Great Photography Walks South Wales and Fujifilm Lovers Worldwide Group). I also have a brand-new blog website dedicated to various other things which I like to call The Ramblings Of A Welshman. I hope you can join me there; you might find it interesting! You’ll find my YouTube Channel Here!