11th Grade — Filters, Retouching & Photo Restoration

⏰ Do Now — Start Here

Have you ever seen an obviously over-filtered or over-retouched photo online? What made it look fake or off?

This is exam-relevant

This lesson maps directly to an Adobe Certified Professional (ACP) exam domain. Keep a running personal vocabulary list all year -- it becomes your exam study guide. See the ACP Exam Prep section for a full study guide and practice questions.

🎯 Today's Big Question

How do designers repair, retouch, and stylize images using filters and restoration tools?

📈 By the End of Today, You Will Be Able To

Apply filters both destructively and non-destructively and explain the difference in outcome.
Use retouching tools (Spot Healing Brush, Clone Stamp, Patch Tool) to repair a damaged or flawed image.
Apply auto-correction adjustments (levels, curves, or auto-tone) appropriately.

🧰 What You'll Need

Computer with Photoshop
A damaged/flawed sample photo (scratches, blemishes, or poor exposure)

📋 Your Plan for Today

Day 1: Filters & Retouching Tools

Do Now (5 min).
Mini-lesson (12 min): applying filters destructively vs. as Smart Filters.
Guided practice (23 min): practice the retouching tools (Spot Healing Brush, Clone Stamp, Patch Tool) on a damaged sample photo.
Share (5 min).

Day 2: Full Restoration

Do Now (5 min).
Independent project (35 min): fully restore/retouch a damaged photo and apply one stylistic filter.
Before/after share (5 min).

🖥️ Today's Slide Deck

Short, on-the-board pacing slides — project these to follow along. (The full details are in the handout above, not here.)

Day 1

⬇️ Open / download this slide PDF

Day 2

⬇️ Open / download this slide PDF

📚 Key Words

Filter: An effect (blur, sharpen, stylize, artistic) applied to an image or layer.
Spot Healing Brush / Clone Stamp / Patch Tool: Retouching tools that repair blemishes or damage by sampling and blending nearby pixels.
Auto-Correction: Quick, automated adjustments to color, contrast, or exposure.

✅ What Your Finished Work Should Include

Before/after restoration scored with a rubric: damage convincingly repaired, filter enhances rather than overwhelms the image.

Exit Ticket: Which retouching tool did you rely on most, and what specifically does it do differently from the others?

📊 Before You Leave

Quick, anonymous class check-in -- takes less than a minute.

Class Check-In

📁 Portfolio Update — Once a Week

Once a week (e.g. every Friday, or your class's last meeting of the week), add your best finished or in-progress work to a running portfolio folder with a 1-2 sentence caption: what it is, what skill or standard it shows. This becomes your formal Google Sites portfolio in Unit F -- keep it current all year so you're not scrambling right before your PBAT and portfolio review.

✍️ Example description for your Google Sites portfolio (fill in YOUR blanks -- don't just copy this):

For this piece, I made ______________ (name what you made) for “Filters, Retouching & Photo Restoration.” This project asked: “How do designers repair, retouch, and stylize images using filters and restoration tools?” I used Filter by ______________ (explain how you used it in THIS piece). The hardest part was ______________, and I solved it by ______________. I'm proud of ______________ because ______________.

🎓 ACP Exam Prep

This lesson connects to the Photoshop Adobe Certified Professional exam: Domain 4: Creating and Modifying Visual Elements

🔗 Want to Learn More?

Adobe Photoshop — Retouching Tutorials

🚀 The Extra Mile

Cross-Class Connection: The same careful, reversible-repair mindset a Chemistry lab or a Shop/Tech class teaches for fixing something precisely.

Career Connection: Restoration work is a real, steady freelance niche inside Photography most students never think to advertise.

Go further -- turn this into a portfolio piece:

Restore a real damaged or faded family photo and present the before/after as a genuine service you could offer. Start here: zoom into the actual damage — scratches, fading, tears — and list each specific flaw before you touch any retouching tool.
Design a "filter style guide" showing four different retouching looks applied to the same photo, as a real service menu. Start here: apply just your first of the four looks to a duplicate layer and get that one right before building out the rest.