A friend of mine found an old 12x16 painting of his mom from 1941.
Of course, its faded and water damaged.

Right now I'm working on replacing the background and the faces.

What I need help on is how to:

1. Get rid of the watermarks on his mother's dress. The blue of the dress
is the lighter blue more toward her stomach.

2. The fading of the two soldiers that occur at the bottom of the pic.

The attachments I've included is to just give you a quick preview on
what you might be working with (pic 1 is the original scan and pic 2
is what I've done so far).

The actual file to work on is at:
Family Photo (http://www.mr-speed.com/pro_gunn_montage_2.jpg)

It is a LARGE file, so if you need to cut the lawn, this might be a good time
to do it :ditsy:

If there's anything else you need, just let me know.

Thanks
Doug

Dodging and Burning through a 50% gray layer will help with the fading at the bottom of the photo. Start with a large soft brush using black at about 10% opacity. Make long sweeping strokes.

Hi Doug

Is this something like what you were looking for?

If so... I used large soft selection brushes to select the lighter parts of the picture. Then I used the gamma adjustment on levels to slowly darken the picture. I did this slowly and used at least 6 levels adjustments. There were areas that had no information so I cloned sections and blended as needed. I did guessed at the bottom of the pocket but did the best I could. For the watermarks I just used blank layers and a clone brush set to lighten and darken at 30 percent as needed. The stripe I selected and filled with a gray then re-colored and reduced opacity to match...hmmm I think that is all I did.

Butch

Hi,

Doug,

... This is how I see it ... particularly following your info:The blue of the dress is the lighter blue more toward her stomach... I worked on the very small original posted here....

If there's anything else you need, just let me know.... It would be very helpful if a good sized original scanning could be posted along with the restoration done .... :happy:

Here's an original scan...

Original Scan (very, very large warning) (http://www.mr-speed.com/pro_before_montage.jpg)

Flora,

What steps did you use? Where they anything close to Daviskw or
Swampy?

Oh, and I LOVE that background! How did you pull that off?

BTW, sorry for the somewhat "broken" scan. I had to make 3 different
scans because of the size of the painting then try to put everything
back together again.

Doug

Butch,

You mentioned about using the gamma adjustment on levels. Where is
that exactly? I know where levels are and selecting different channels,
but I don't see any gamma.

Thanks
Doug

Hi Doug

Is this something like what you were looking for?

If so... I used large soft selection brushes to select the lighter parts of the picture. Then I used the gamma adjustment on levels to slowly darken the picture. I did this slowly and used at least 6 levels adjustments. There were areas that had no information so I cloned sections and blended as needed. I did guessed at the bottom of the pocket but did the best I could. For the watermarks I just used blank layers and a clone brush set to lighten and darken at 30 percent as needed. The stripe I selected and filled with a gray then re-colored and reduced opacity to match...hmmm I think that is all I did.

Butch

Mods,

FYI: opening those large scans locks up my Safari (OSX.3.9). They do load correctly in FireFox 1.5.0.2 ('DeerPark').

Hi Doug

I always called the gray or center slider on the levels adjusment the Gamma slider. I used a soft selection brush to paint over the light area then inverted the selection and open a levels adjustment and moved the center slider slowly to the right watching the photo as I did it.

Butch

Hi,

RokcetScientist,

thanks for the info!!! :pleased: (no problem with Netscape either!)

Butch,

I like your darker restoration much better :thumbsup: ...

It might be my monitor, but usually the contrast in most of your works looks very strong ... particularly in the shadows...

jclguru,

(working with Photoshop CS2), here is what I did:

Balancing, 'cleaning up' and correcting

* Image>Adjustment>Shadow/Highlight to balance darkest and lightest parts of the picture. (I toned down the highlights to get more details in the original background)

* Heal Brush to remove the water marks from the mother's dress.

* Levels exactly like Butch to minimize the fading at the bottom of the image.

* Heal Brush and Select+copy+paste good parts of the picture to better define sleeves and buttons on the uniforms.

* Hue/Saturation and Selective Colors to improve colour on the faces

* Brightness/Contrast on selected parts (faces) to enhance them.

* Blank Layers set to Soft Light and Overlay for further enhancements.

Fixing the Background (Attachment 1)

* Selected the Background (which, due to the difficult scanning had different colours and luminosity)

*With the selection active, I created a new blank layer, set its blending to Color and, after having sampled from an area of the warmer coloured background (my left in the smaller original scanning), I filled the selction with the colour sampled.

* Used the Levels to 'dim' the brighter part of the background to make it uniform in brightness and contrast.

* Patch Tool and Heal Brush to remove the water marks/spots from the Background.

* Dust and scratches to clean it up

* Added some noise to the corrected background to blend it better in with the rest of the picture.

Making the people 'pop' out more

* Sampled colour from a darker spot of the background colour and created a very soft oval vignette to darken edges and corners of the image. (play with the Vignette Layer's blending for the right effect).

As most of the times...it took me much longer to write the explanation than not to restore the image ... :wink:

Hope this helps.

Hi Flora

Guilty as charged with the excess contrast…I hate GRAY…lol. I am not a pastel type of guy…anyway with these old eyes I need contrast. My daughter certainly agrees with you she says I always boost colors and they often look unnatural. Red is never red or bright enough for me. Too many comic books when I was a kid.

I never thanked you for a wonderful answer you gave me in another thread on the use of a gray layer… Thanks again

Butch

My try:
- magnetic lasso tool around friends
- copy merged and paste
- replacing background
- hue/saturation on bg layer
- clone stamp tool
- color balance and shadow/highlight on friends family layer
Best Regards!

Just to let you know I'm still here :wavey:

I've been trying everyone's ideas.

Thanks everyone for the help!

Doug

i'm still a fan, flora. very nice job :)

craig

Hi,

Butch,

I don't care much about greys either, but ...I am exactly 'your' opposite ... my husband complains about my 'muted colours' taste ... :wink:
I never thanked you for a wonderful answer you gave me in another thread on the use of a gray layer… Thanks again..You are welcome, Butch ... Glad if you found it helpful... :classic:

oltenius,

interesting background choice!! :happy:
Some water marks on the mother's dress and the fading at the bottom are still visible, though...

Doug,

you are welcome!!

Craig,

thank you!! :pleased:

(Where have you been?? .... Glad to see you!!)

Flora, Thanks for comments! Some water marks because my old monitor :bawling:
Regards

All the work produced is excellent, so I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring.