I ran across this Depression era photo and found it oddly intriguing. Does Depression + Intriguing = Important? I welcome all opinions. :question:

It is a really scrungy negative. I lightly applied Polaroid D&S, liberally applied noise filters to the essentially imageless top and bottom areas, brought out a few things with screen and color dodge layers. In order to nail those dark areas I applied a duplicate multiply layer and unmasked the areas of interest.

I am left with alot of grain.

Undecided. Should I stop where I am, forge ahead or deposit it in the round file? :question: I am leaning towards stopping where I am. What would you do?

I haven't time to do this right now, but I'll have a bash later, in the meantime you could try:

- Dupe the bg layer
- Move tool, nudge using arrow keys : up, up, left, left
- Change blending mode to :'Darken' for light grain or 'Lighten' for dark grain.
- Then make a new layer, copy all layers and paste. (Ctrl, Alt, Shift,E)
- Move tool, nudge using arrow keys: down, down, right, right
- Change blending mode to: 'Lighten' if you used the 'Darken' mode previously or - 'Darken' if you used 'Lighten'.

Repeat the process using the vice versa.

Hope that helps.

Thanks squggle. That's a new tehnique for me....However, I couldn't get it to work. Did you leave something out?

Nope don't think so, I tried it on your image and it's not working because it's a very lo-res image.

What resolution image are you working on?

Hi Blue Dog

I think you have done an excellent job. You are at the point where the only way to get rid of more gray noise is to darken ...a trade off.

I gave it a try but could do no better than you maybe someone will have better advice.

Sure wish someone would develop a filter that measures adjacent colors to a threshold controlled gray. It would make restorations a lot easier. The smudgy gray is always frustrating. You can see some detail and tone but you just can't quite get it from behind the gray grunge.

Butch

Squggle and Butch, Thanks for the feedback.

Squggle, it was scanned from a 116 negative at 600 dpi in 16 bit B&W. Originally I scanned everything at 1200 dpi in 24 bit color, but it was taking so long to digest it and I suspected it was overkill. I wonder, if you are used to working at 300 dpi, do you have to double the size of the moves for 600dpi? But then, the resolution of the posted version is only 1/3rd of that.

Squggle,

Got it. Messed around with it and got it to work. My problem was in misunderstanding reverse. Works good with the obvious compromise in sharpness. Thanks.

My work.

The life is beautiful.

My work.

The life is beautiful.


That's great!


Please tell me how you did it? :bow: