Need advice on how to repair this picture

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 01:30:28 -0500, "Algo" wrote:

The picture is at http://photos.yahoo.com/revpsychology in the image repair folder. It is a picture of my great great or great great great grandfather. I don’t know exactly how many generations back it is but this picture was early 1900’s I think. My aunt has the original but it’s faded so badly. I scanned it and tried several different image repair techniques that I found online but nothing seems to be helping this picture. Any advice would be great. The one you see at the above link is one that I had to shrink down in photoshop. The original is twice the canvas size and 5.6 mb in size. Thanks

Lots of work there if you are good with curves, start there then approach the excess noise issues. Will take awhile. Is there any way to post the original scanned file?

"ZONED!" wrote in message

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 01:30:28 -0500, "Algo" wrote:

The picture is at http://photos.yahoo.com/revpsychology in the image

repair

folder. It is a picture of my great great or great great great

grandfather.

I don’t know exactly how many generations back it is but this picture was early 1900’s I think. My aunt has the original but it’s faded so badly.

I

scanned it and tried several different image repair techniques that I

found

online but nothing seems to be helping this picture. Any advice would be great. The one you see at the above link is one that I had to shrink

down

in photoshop. The original is twice the canvas size and 5.6 mb in size. Thanks

Lots of work there if you are good with curves, start there then approach the excess noise issues. Will take awhile. Is there any way to post the original scanned file?

Levels would be one of the main things. I actually got impressive and immediate results with Photoshop’s Auto Levels. Then I desaturated for black and white, but later decided to readjust for a Sepia Tone look. I also selectively filtered the several horizontal lines/scratches by using a narrow horizontal feathered (4 pixels) Rectangular Marquee selection and applying the Dust and Scratches filter at 4 pixel and 23 levels.

In another version, Equalize and desaturation also worked quite well.

Understand that you probably won’t ever make it look like it was taken with a Nikon in perfect lighting, but there is tremendous room for improvement. Much can accomplished quite quickly using only a few of Photoshop’s tools and filters.

I’m sure posting a larger version would give many folks here something new to play with.

Peadge 🙂

On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 23:46:51 -0800, "Peadge"
wrote:

"ZONED!" wrote in message

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 01:30:28 -0500, "Algo" wrote:

The picture is at http://photos.yahoo.com/revpsychology in the image

repair

folder. It is a picture of my great great or great great great

grandfather.

I don’t know exactly how many generations back it is but this picture was early 1900’s I think. My aunt has the original but it’s faded so badly.

I

scanned it and tried several different image repair techniques that I

found

online but nothing seems to be helping this picture. Any advice would be great. The one you see at the above link is one that I had to shrink

down

in photoshop. The original is twice the canvas size and 5.6 mb in size. Thanks

Lots of work there if you are good with curves, start there then approach the excess noise issues. Will take awhile. Is there any way to post the original scanned file?

Levels would be one of the main things. I actually got impressive and immediate results with Photoshop’s Auto Levels. Then I desaturated for black and white, but later decided to readjust for a Sepia Tone look. I also selectively filtered the several horizontal lines/scratches by using a narrow horizontal feathered (4 pixels) Rectangular Marquee selection and applying the Dust and Scratches filter at 4 pixel and 23 levels.
In another version, Equalize and desaturation also worked quite well.
Understand that you probably won’t ever make it look like it was taken with a Nikon in perfect lighting, but there is tremendous room for improvement. Much can accomplished quite quickly using only a few of Photoshop’s tools and filters.

I’m sure posting a larger version would give many folks here something new to play with.

Peadge 🙂

Do you use curves much?

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 01:30:28 -0500, "Algo" wrote:

The picture is at http://photos.yahoo.com/revpsychology in the image repair folder. It is a picture of my great great or great great great grandfather. I don’t know exactly how many generations back it is but this picture was early 1900’s I think. My aunt has the original but it’s faded so badly. I scanned it and tried several different image repair techniques that I found online but nothing seems to be helping this picture. Any advice would be great. The one you see at the above link is one that I had to shrink down in photoshop. The original is twice the canvas size and 5.6 mb in size. Thanks

Lots of work there if you are good with curves, start there then approach the excess noise issues. Will take awhile. Is there any way to post the original scanned file?

http://jaswebpics.com/b4be.jpg

Couldn’t really work on the noise/scratches at that res, but this is a quick go using levels on the RGB to get a reasonably neutral colour, then greyscaled, then levels tweak to fit to full histogram range, then a slight USM…

I also tried screening the shadows on a 30% opac. layer, over a multiplied highlights layer at 30% and this may have put some more detail back into the midtones, but it was subtle.

For the noise, I find the healing brush good for broad areas of similar tone, or a part transparent clone for areas with high contrast. Maybe some selective blurring in one of the colour channels before going mono?

Cheers, Jason
Folio: www.gadgetaus.com/photos

Hi,

For me it looks like the original scan might be slightly better, if i’d be you, i’d try to adjust the scanner so it would produce better start for correction in PS. If the image really is as fade it looks, you might try to scan with maximun color depth (and of course then continue in 16 bits/channel mode in photoshop) of the scanner to get more tones between before adjusting.

Actually, the scanner probably always uses it’s maximum bit-depth, but normally the driver transforms the image to 8 bit-mode (if max is more), if you don’t tell it to deliver 16-bit images as not so many programs can handle more than 8 bits. That means, that the well adjusted scan to 8-bit mode can produce as good results as 16-bit raw scan, but it’s easier to work in PS than scanning same image over and over again with different settings.

After good scan it’s lots of handywork with curves, stamp and carefully selected filtering, but many of this has been covered in previous replies.

Sami

Algo wrote:

The picture is at http://photos.yahoo.com/revpsychology in the image repair folder. It is a picture of my great great or great great great grandfather. I don’t know exactly how many generations back it is but this picture was early 1900’s I think. My aunt has the original but it’s faded so badly. I scanned it and tried several different image repair techniques that I found online but nothing seems to be helping this picture. Any advice would be great. The one you see at the above link is one that I had to shrink down in photoshop. The original is twice the canvas size and 5.6 mb in size. Thanks

"ZONED!" wrote in message

Do you use curves much?

I played with curves on this one too, but didn’t seem to get any better results, just spent a lot more time. Where’s Mike Russell when you need him!?!

This image was at a resolution of 200 ppi at 1.735 by 2.4 inches and was only 48 KB. Even a 300 or 400 ppi version at 3 by 5 would be a lot nicer to play with and still be way less than the original 5+ MB.

Peadge 🙂

Here’s the original and two subsequent versions in a Dreamweaver timeline – 5 second delay between images:
http://tinyurl.com/6mnux

These use some of Photoshop’s simplest tools and filters.

Peadge 🙂

Peadge wrote:

"ZONED!" wrote in message

Do you use curves much?

I played with curves on this one too, but didn’t seem to get any better results, just spent a lot more time. Where’s Mike Russell when you need him!?!

LOL. I think you’re getting very good results with this one, Peadge. The most critical adjustment is the shadow and highlight, and levels gets the job done nicely.

This image was at a resolution of 200 ppi at 1.735 by 2.4 inches and was only 48 KB. Even a 300 or 400 ppi version at 3 by 5 would be a lot nicer to play with and still be way less than the original 5+ MB.

I agree. Also, I suspect the grainy appearance of the image may be due to paper texture. This may be reduced by combining two rotated scans as layers, with the top layer in darken mode.
—

Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com
www.geigy.2y.net

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 01:30:28 -0500, "Algo" wrote:

The picture is at http://photos.yahoo.com/revpsychology in the image repair folder. It is a picture of my great great or great great great grandfather. I don’t know exactly how many generations back it is but this picture was early 1900’s I think. My aunt has the original but it’s faded so badly. I scanned it and tried several different image repair techniques that I found online but nothing seems to be helping this picture. Any advice would be great. The one you see at the above link is one that I had to shrink down in photoshop. The original is twice the canvas size and 5.6 mb in size. Thanks

If it’s really important to you, buy Karen Eismann’s book, Photoshop Restoration and Retouching. There are a number of techniques, all of which you’ll need to use, to get the photograph to something approaching printable, and they are all in there.
—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

On Sat, 01 Jan 2005 02:25:35 +0000, Hecate wrote:

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 01:30:28 -0500, "Algo" wrote:

The picture is at http://photos.yahoo.com/revpsychology in the image repair folder. It is a picture of my great great or great great great grandfather. I don’t know exactly how many generations back it is but this picture was early 1900’s I think. My aunt has the original but it’s faded so badly. I scanned it and tried several different image repair techniques that I found online but nothing seems to be helping this picture. Any advice would be great. The one you see at the above link is one that I had to shrink down in photoshop. The original is twice the canvas size and 5.6 mb in size. Thanks

If it’s really important to you, buy Karen Eismann’s book, Photoshop Restoration and Retouching. There are a number of techniques, all of which you’ll need to use, to get the photograph to something approaching printable, and they are all in there.
—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

Might just be worth having it scanned by a service that has the best equipment so as to be able to have as much to work with as possible. Photoshop can not realistic fix a really bad picture without details.

I uploaded the original to here
http://home.comcast.net/~algo2/onlinestorage/faded_picture_o riginal.bmp

Please note that it’s 5.6 mb so you might want to right click the link here and choose save target as.

I want to thank you all for your advice so far.

Pretty damned good , Pleadge!

"Peadge" wrote in message

Here’s the original and two subsequent versions in a Dreamweaver

timeline –

5 second delay between images:
http://tinyurl.com/6mnux

These use some of Photoshop’s simplest tools and filters.
Peadge 🙂

"Scruff" wrote in message

Pretty damned good , Pleadge!

"Peadge" wrote in message

Here’s the original and two subsequent versions in a Dreamweaver

timeline –

5 second delay between images:
http://tinyurl.com/6mnux

Beats the heck out of this mess: http://elearning.winona.edu/jjs/x.gif

Try "saving target as…" here too. It’s a 2.2 MB PNG file in B&W.

http://tinyurl.com/4ybs5

Peadge 🙂

"Algo" wrote in message

I uploaded the original to here
http://home.comcast.net/~algo2/onlinestorage/faded_picture_o riginal.bmp
Please note that it’s 5.6 mb so you might want to right click the link

here

and choose save target as.

I want to thank you all for your advice so far.

That’s pretty good.

Thanks

I’m also thinking of going to books-a-million to get the photoshop restoration book that someone in a previous post mentioned. It’s hard choosing a photoshop book because most of them focus around the most basics.

—– Original Message —–
From: "Peadge"
Newsgroups: comp.graphics.apps.photoshop
Sent: Monday, January 03, 2005 2:10 PM
Subject: Re: Need advice on how to repair this picture

Try "saving target as…" here too. It’s a 2.2 MB PNG file in B&W.
http://tinyurl.com/4ybs5

Peadge 🙂

"Algo" wrote in message

I uploaded the original to here
http://home.comcast.net/~algo2/onlinestorage/faded_picture_o riginal.bmp
Please note that it’s 5.6 mb so you might want to right click the link

here

and choose save target as.

I want to thank you all for your advice so far.

It was hard getting any additional benefit from the higher scan, but I did what I could, and it looks a lot better than the original.

Peadge 🙂

"Algo" wrote in message

That’s pretty good.

Thanks

I’m also thinking of going to books-a-million to get the photoshop restoration book that someone in a previous post mentioned. It’s hard choosing a photoshop book because most of them focus around the most

basics.