Hi,
I'm new here and trying to learn to restore photos. I inherited many old ones when my mom passed away last year and there are some that are in bad shape. I can do simple repairs using just clone and smudge but would like to learn to things that would work better on some of them. I'm using Paint Shop Pro 8 and although I know what masks are and what they do, I have not been able to find a tutorial that will take me step by step on a photo restoration that masking would be the appropriate method to use. When I try to remove spots or stains there always seems to be something missing in the steps and I just can't get it.
I'm attaching the link to my Great Great Grandpa's photo. Could any of you tell me what you would do to restore this? I've worked on it and was able to get the face looking pretty good but the suit is another story. I don't know where to start with it.
Any help would be appreciatee.
Nan
www.designs-by-nan.com/FamilyPhotos.html

Hi Nan

Welcome to Retouch Pro.

What I have done is by no means perfect. But it may give you some ideas

Levels Adjusted
Created a layer using a mix of blue and green channels
Polaroid Dust and Scratches set to Dark with Retouchers mask
Polaroid Dust and Scratches set to Light with Retouchers mask
Blank layers set to
Sharpened
Added the sepia back

Please ask if you need more info
With a little more care and time you should get a very good restoration from this.

Hope this helps.

Ken

Cameraken

>Created a layer using a mix of blue and green channels

Can you explain how you do that?

I am new to photo retouching. Saw the picture on Grandpa, so decided to give it a try. Have no idea as to the quality of the work. Used Photoshop CS2, did a lot of the work on the face using the spot healing brush and the patch tool. Some cloning and use of the healing brush.

Dudley

Hi Swampy.

After adjusting the levels of the RGB channels individually I noticed that the Blue channel contained the most detail but that the green channel was cleaner.
I copied the blue channel to a layer and then copied the green channel to a layer above and set its blending mode to darken. I then cloned out the remaining creases.

Green Channel Layer > Blending mode Darken
Blue Channel Layer > Blending mode Normal

From there I used Polaroid Dust and Scratches.

I hope that explains.


Hi Dudley
Welcome to Retouch Pro
That’s a very nice restoration for a 'newbie' :pleased:
The only thing that looks wrong is the dark ‘shadow’ at the right side of his head. It just needs blending in a little more. Great job on the skin and jacket. :bigthmb:


Ken

hi nan and welcome to RP.

not an easy task, this one. it would be very difficult to give you the exact steps here... there were a LOT. but basically, it's a LOT of clone and airbrush. added in there also was a selection of part of the coat that i saved off as a separate image (not a layer) and then mirrored and pasted back on in other places to rebuild the coat. i also desaturated using hue/sat adjustment layers. and near the beginning i think i remember using a clarify filter to bring out the contrasts more. near the end i also used a 'digital camera noise removal'.

this is NOT an easy image and certainly more could have been done. when you start out doing restorations, on each restore you have to somewhat decide just how picky you're going to be. do you do a quickie for printing or a Sistine Chapel, months long, full restore. for us here on RP we tend to do rather quick work to help others and to learn ourselves. this is an image, with that coat in particular, that could take quite a while. so, decide what you want and what you'll be happy with and shoot for that.

craig

I'm in awe of what you were all able to accomplish. Craig, you did an amazing job on the coat and you got his hair looking right too. I wasn't sure what was going on with in the original. I decided to give up on the coat and just darkened it. For the face I still did smudge and clone. Also made a curves layer, added some noise and a new background and fixed his missing mustache on the right.
Thanks for all the help. Here's my finished version along with the original. You can tell I'm new at this for sure.
www.designs-by-nan.com/FamilyPhotos.html
Nan

nan, thank you :)

nice job on the face and hair! but i think you shld go a bit more on the coat ;) give it another shot. even if you only cloned out some of those dark spots on the current one, it would be better. and you may be new to this but you did a very nice job. a bit of clone marks here and there, but that's easy to fix. i see you treated that one mark on his collar as a stick pin. interesting; i'll have to take another look at that. you may be right.

the other thing that i was a bit uncertain of in this one, was older folks often have 'liver spots' on their skin and all those black spots on his face gave me pause. i ended up somewhat compromising by leaving more 'texture' than i might normally.

fun stuff, isnt it :)

craig

Thanks Craig. I'll give the coat another shot when my vision returns to normal from this time! You're right, there are still some clone marks that should be fixed but yes, I'm sure he did have liver spots. It would be hard to tell them from the damage though. I believe he was freckled also as others in the family were. I'm sure the mark on his shirt was a button. I should have spent more time on that area too.
Thanks for taking a look and for the tips.
It is fun but frustrating.
Nan

I'm sure he did have liver spots. It would be hard to tell them from the damage though. I believe he was freckled also as others in the family were. lol. liver spots AND freckles! sheesh. was he walking outdoors and spattered with mud too? ;) you really pick the easy ones, dont you :)

yes, i looked again and i believe you're right; it is a pin. good catch.

yes, can be quite frustrating. the tendency is to want to restore it to perfection. the reality is, where that might be possible, there are other mitigating considerations and circumstances often, which is why i said in my earlier post you kind of have to decide beforehand just how good you want to make it based on those other considerations and circumstances: client doesnt want to spend that much; you're swamped with other jobs and must move on; it's going to be printed and printer isnt going to print that high a resolution anyways (this is the one i usually run into); 'i'm not good enough' (NEVER listen to those!); and other such things. so, the trick is to get good enough to cover most circumstances. it's very rare that you'll be called on to do a 'mona lisa, cistine chapel' restore. it would be nice to be that good but your bread and butter, if you're going to do this professionally, comes from something quite a bit less than that. so, do as good a job as is warranted by the legitimate circumstances and you'll be fine.

craig

Hi,

Nan,

welcome to RP!! :pleased:

Good job! ... But I agree with Craig about the coat ... :wink:

I had worked on your image before realizing you use Paint Shop Pro ...

Don't know if explaining what I did in PS CS2 is going to help ... but here is my result...

Craig, I don't expect to ever get skilled enough at this to do it as a profession. Although I love it. I've spent the last 5 years creating graphics and I find that I like working on the photos much more.

Flora, you did a beautiful job on Grandpa. You got the shadows and highlights on his face just right. Did you do any airbrushing to achieve that? I also love the way you brought out the shape of his nose so clearly.
If there were any steps you did that could be done somehow in PSP I'd love to hear them. I keep dreaming of that healing brush that some of you have with PS.
Thanks for taking the time to give this one a go.
Nan

nan, get the upgrade from psp 8 to 10 and you'll get a similar tool to the 'heal' brush in ps. you'll get some other nice upgrades as well. psp's 'digital camera noise removal' tool is as good as any out there, for instance.

nice job, flora. i too like the face.

craig

Thanks Cameraken! :-)

Hi again Nan,

thank you so much for your kind feedback!! :pleased:
I keep dreaming of that healing brush that some of you have with PS.... It is indeed a wonderful Tool...

Well, here is what I did ... I hope you can 'translate' the steps for PSP ... Craig will surely help you ....

Attachment 1 is a snapshot of part of my workflow so it might be easier to see what I did..


To remove the yellow cast and add a bit of tone at the same time, I started creating two Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layers...without changing anything in them yet, I changed the mode of the first one to Color, leaving the top one to Normal ....


Working first on the Normal Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer (Top), I decreased the Saturation to -100. (the image simply turns black&white).
Working on the Color Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer (Middle), I tweaked Hue, Saturation and Lightness as in Attachment 2. This is one of the digidaan (http://www.digidaan.nl/index2.html) techniques for turning an image to B&W...


After this, I created two blank Layers ** set to Lighten one and Darken the other ... Starting on the Lighten Layer, I selected a semi-soft Heal Brush (Normal Mode) and sampling from lighter surrounding areas, I 'healed' away the dark spots .... Did the opposite procedure on the Darken Layer.. (sampling from darker surrounding areas, I 'healed' away the light spots). My result after these procedure: (Attachment 3)


Merged visible, used the Patch Tool to remove the bigger spots (same family as the Healing Brush .. :o: ). Duplicated the 'patched' Layer and run Dust&Scratches on the duplicate to remove the remaining noise, small scratches, etc. in selected parts of the image ... (that's why there is a Layer Mask attached...)


Merged visible again, duplicated the merged Layer and, for a balanced increase of contrast, I run the Shadow/Highlight adjustment ... (another incredibly useful Tool available from PS CS upwards..)


Now, I had a well balanced nearly noise-free image ... the only thing that bothered me was the still darker lower part of your Grandpa's face, so, I loosely selected it, strongly feathered the selection, and run a Levels Adjustment Layer to brighten up that part only ... (My result after this: (Attachment 4).


After this it's a matter of how much or how little you wish to do to finish your restoration....


You got the shadows and highlights on his face just right. Did you do any airbrushing to achieve that? I also love the way you brought out the shape of his nose so clearly.To enhance shadows and highlights on your Grandpa's face, the shape of his nose and to generally enhance the 3-dimensional feeling, I used several Blank Layers set to: Lighten, Darken, Soft Light and Overlay .. **

** You'll find the Blank Layers Technique in this Tutorial (http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=206)... Just scroll down the page to the "BLANK/EMPTY LAYERS SET TO....." paragraph.

Hope this helps a bit...

Flora, thank you for taking the time to write out all of your steps. I'll see which ones I can duplicate in PSP. I already use blank layers all the time for my graphics. I don't know why I didn't think of doing it on the photos. I guess I've been thinking there is a different correct way of doing a restore but whatever works.

Craig, when you said the clone marks were easy to fix, did you mean by more, lower opacity cloning?
Sorry for so many questions.
Nan

Craig, when you said the clone marks were easy to fix, did you mean by more, lower opacity cloning? yes. either that or simply do those areas over from scratch. you can sometimes get away with a light smudge to get rid of clone marks but i prefer not to in most cases.

in psp, i think starting with version 9, you have the 'makeover' tool. i believe this is similar to the 'heal' tool in ps. it's 2 concentric rings with a crossover mark in the middle. the inner ring is the area that will be altered and the outer ring is what is used to supplant the data in the inner ring. so, it's a sort of specialized clone. this is also fairly good at getting rid of clone marks and is sometimes more useful than clone on small areas. you can change the 'size' and 'strength' (opacity) of the tool.

there are a lot of tricks/techniques you can use with cloning. flora keeps bugging me to write a tutorial on it and i did write up a rather lengthy piece in another thread. if you can find that it may help. it was learning the clone tool that got me to thinking i could do restorations. so, it's a valuable and powerful tool.

craig

Hi Nan.

I thought you may be interested to see this. I was trying to find a better way to repair this image and finished up writing a filter to help with the repair of this type of damage.

The filter is here
http://www.filterforge.com/filters/1149.html

The attached image is the result of running this filter only. No other repairs have been made. It is still not perfect but it has removed a lot of the dark spots without sacrificing much detail.

Ken.

Hi,

Nan,

you are welcome... :pleased: .... sorry it didn't help much ....

......whatever works. .... In my opinion, that's the only 'correct' way ... :wink:

Craig, ...

flora keeps bugging me to write a tutorial on it and i did write up a rather lengthy piece in another thread.... :D :D ... and I won't give up that easily!!! ... Anyway ... the 'lenghty piece' you wrote is in this Thread (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14263).. (on page 2 too..) ... and I still think it would be such a pity if it were 'lost/buried' as the number of Threads and Posts increases...

Ken,

Great job for both... the Crack Remover and its application!! :bigthmb: :bigthmb:

Thanks Craig. I will be working on the cloning skills for sure. You've been a great help on this.

Ken, very impressive filter. It really cleaned the photo up. I wouldn't be able to use it at this point since I'm still using Windows 98.

Flora, you were very kind and helpful and I pay close attention to all of your methods. Thank you also for sending the link to Craig's cloning thread. I had looked and couldn't find it. I have it saved now and will be referring back to it as I go along. Great information.
You REALLY should write a tutorial Craig. That way it will be where everyone can find it!

Thanks again to all of you.
Nan

Thanks Flora.

Nan, Filter Forge is for XP so I am afraid it will be of no use to you.


Ken.

ken, like i posted on the filter forge forum, i think that's a brilliant filter. well done! wish i'd seen that filter before i started this restore.

flora, nag, nag, nag ;) in all honesty, i've never used that tutorial writing thing before. someone will have to write a tutorial on writing tutorials first :) (and knowing doug, it probably already exists :) ). i've sort of been searching for something that would do a video/screen capture style that you could add a narration to. sort of like flash but without the steep price and complexity. i think that would be the best way to show cloning techniques. you'd see the actions as they happen. if anyone knows of such a beast, especially a freebie, i'd love to see it.

nan, again, thank you :) i can show you other techniques for images like this also. one is cloning regions to separate layers and working on each individually. another is using parts of the image to replace other parts, like i did on part of the coat here. another is cloning without the clone tool or makeover/heal tools. and then there's airbrushing, pixel painting, cleanup filters, color replacing and so on and so forth. but overall, clone is the king. learn to use that well and restores become much better....maybe not easier, but certainly better.

craig

A work.

Hayat güzeldir.


Paintning:

Brush / Mode colour / paint.