Hi,

My mum has asked me if this photo of her and her sisters from the 50s can be restored. It's quite badly scratched and I don't know if it's too damaged to be helped.

I'm relatively inexperienced using photoshop and while I can use the clone stamp and noise filters, I'm not sure where to start with this photo.

I'd really appreciate help/advice from anyone who would know what I should do.

http://www.4shared.com/file/15205068/edffd3c1

Any comments appreciated

Owen

Thats a real tough one Owen. So much of the detail has been lost, you are going to end up with a very 'soft' picture in the end.

I am sure that it can be cleaned up, but I'm afraid that any restoration will end up looking more like an illustration and less like an actual photo. I am going to give the pic a quick and dirty once over, just to see what is possible. I am sure others on the board more skilled than I , may be able to give you a better idea of what can be done.

-Guy

Okay,

Here is just one of the girls. I wasn't able to get any good results using standard techniques, so I went out and bastardized your image.

Basically, I drew selections and blur/smudged my own colors and shadow patterns. Then I dropped the opacity on those smudged portions so that some of the old photo would show back through. I found a period floral pattern and put that on the dress and worked with blend modes and opacities to make that look halfway decent.

I found some legs on another period photograph, posted them in, and then selectively erased portions of that layer, so the legs appeared to fade into shadow.

The face and hair were very difficult, and involved the blur/smudge technique described above. I dropped in some new eyes, and then faded them as much as possible, so you just get a hint of those details.

The hair was also pasted in, and then smudged to length. I stole the cone hat from girl on far right.

So, take those techniques for what they are worth. I am not sure the ethics of using someones elese eyes/hair/legs to fill in missing details of a family member, but that was the best I could do.

-Guy Thomas

The difficulty in such a major restoration, is that no matter where you get the "missing" bits from, the facial features will be v. hard to get looking natural and lifelike.

As a cop out:

a) Mask out the people
b) Invert and blur the background
c) Resect the people
d) USM
e) Add a subtle "paint effect"

The eye can often see what's not there and if you make it look artistic, it can make a good comrpomise.

Glen
x

Imgonna,

I like your method. It's a nice way to bring new life to an otherwise 'lost' photo.

-Guy

I gave this a try. Maybe a little improved.

dc

owen, welcome to RP.

this may not show well. i had to compress pretty severely, but i think i can make a point with it.

i start on images like this by 'finding the image'. i do what i can to bring out the detail first. in this case that amounted to some fade correction and contrast/brightness.

after that it would probably be clone, airbrush and 'push' (heavy smudge in ps).