A co-worker has a problem with a few pictures. Seems his wife and mother-in-law got in a little arguement, and the mother-in law cut up a few pictures. What is the best way to put them back together? I have not seen the pictures, so I dont know how bad they are. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

NOBODY???? I have tried with a old b and w photo, but it didnt seem to work very good. I scanned each piece then extracted it. This put each piece on a transparent layer then used the transform tool, to get the pieces where I wanted them on a new transparent layer, is there a better way?

a few days ago .. http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14401

Maybe something there will help. I would prefer to scan the pieces of one photo together as one scan, in roughly the correct positions. It helps see at a glance the structure of the pic when it becomes the bottom layer.

You say 'it didn't seem to work very good' What particular problem did you have when you tried?

Have a look at that thread and see if anything there helps in what you are trying to do :)

leanan`si

If you have Photoshop CS2 you can use Photomerge which may be more effective if you photo is not torn in too many little pieces. Scan each piece as a separate image at same resolution.
Regards, Murray

Thank you, I will give it a try.

Katrin Eismann in the second edition of Restoration & Retouching in Ch. 6 pp171-174 has a project on putting pictures back together. Worked well for me.

if the mother-in-law cut them up and didnt rip them up, then you're probably in luck. it's a lot easier :)

the first thing to do is to scan each piece individually, making VERY sure you have them all aligned EXACTLY the same way; you dont want to have to rotate them in your editor. usually, with most scanners, there is a way to keep pieces or pictures totally oriented exactly the same way. sometimes it's one edge of the scanner and sometimes marks along the side, and if i recall correctly, one scanner actually has marks on the glass plate for this.

once you've got the pieces done individually, take the pieces and put them on a piece of paper of a size slightly larger than the original picture. line them up and make sure they're all going to fit correctly and as close as possible to each other without overlapping. once you've done this dry run and things look pretty good, get some of the glue that is a sort of semi-glue. you dont want a glue that is going to permanently tack the pieces down. you want one that is only going to stick them on the paper but be able to take them off the paper again...sort of like the glue post-it notes uses.

glue the images in place all on that paper and scan that.

you now have your image both ways, in pieces and as one piece. the chances are, if things glued down well, that the glued one is going to be all you need. take that image into your graphic editor and simply clone/heal out the small division lines and you shld be good to go.

all of that is based on if the image was cut cleanly. if it was ripped you've got a bigger job ahead of you.

craig

That sounds like it will work. I am supposed to get the pictures next week, I will sure give it a try. He told me that the pictures were cut, not torn. I asked him how many pieces, but he did not know. So all I can do now is wait and see. The things people do............... oh well. I didnt have anything to do anyway. It will be good practice. Thank you.

you're welcome. hope it goes well.

craig