Hi all, I've been poking around here for a while but I haven't posted until now. I have to say that the work in here is amazing and quite humbling to say the least, and I clearly have a lot to learn.

I've been using Photoshop CS to do a handful of retouches, restorations and colorizations over the last few years, but most of what I do involves meticulous use of the Clone tool and not too much else. A few of them can be seen here: http://entertainment.webshots.com/album/99066347nBrosq

However the reason I'm posting is another restoration that I've been struggling with for a while, one I was hoping I could get some pointers on. It's a portrait of my great-grandparents from the early 1900s. The original is fairly large, I had to (very carefully) make four separate scans of it and then combine the pieces in Photoshop before I could work with it. I've gotten rid of most of the spots and tried to even out the effects of what looks like water damage, but it still leaves a lot to be desired. I'm not very good at smoothing out grainy images while still keeping enough detail, plus I'm not sure how to address the damage at the bottom of the image. I'd eventually like to get this to a point where I could colorize it but at the moment I'm stuck. Any help would be most appreciated.

Thanks,
John

Sorry, I forgot to attach my progress with it so far...here's a link, the file is over 100K: http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h23/dolce_man/great_grandparents1.jpg

Is this a photo? It looks like a drawing?
The stuff on your web site is very nice.
I'm not real good at the restoration, I think you would just have to do a lot of cloning. and you might try neat image to smooth out the grain. Although I like some grain in the photos, I think that is what make them look old.

Hi John,

I am not a restorationist (I just fiddle) and hopefully someone who is more skilled can give you pointers on what to do. My effort is attached. For starters I duplicated the layer and set it to multiply. You can always adjust the layer opacity if it is too dark. I used the dodge tool and burn tool along with the blur tool. Very little cloning. Used shadow and highlights to adjust the picture a little. On the shirt I used the blur tool and went back with the dodge tool to lighten it. The burn tool to darken the suit and add shadows.

Enjoyed your web site.

dc

Hi Dolce_man. I guess it really depends on how you want to proceed with this photo. Looking at your original, I do believe that this started out as a photo, which at this point if very faded and yellow. If I was starting from the original, I would begin by using the channel mixer, with the monochrome box set, and setting the red to 114%, Green to -144%, and Blue to +170%. This keeps the best information from the red and blue channels and discards the green channel, which appears to keep the best of the information. I would then start adjusting to enhance from there since you can now can see most of the important details. I would discard the background completely on this photo, as there is no important information their. You can generate a new back ground for this later when you are done. Your image that you have worked on so far does look more like a drawing than a photo. If this is the look that you want, then you have a good start. I would still adjust the contrast by using a channel mixer layer to get the best data from the red and blue channels, and increase the contrast. Again, be sure to click the monochrome box. This is a black and white picture, so you don't need the color information for color. If you want to add color, you can do that later with a hue adjustment set to colorize. To fix the bottom, your choices are to recreate the missing information, or get rid of it. You could put an oval around the subjects to fade the edges out or just crop it off. If you want to repair it, you will need to get a little creative, but you can pretty much just follow the existing lines on down the page. :pleased:

I looked at you samples and I must say that you have some really nice work there. I really like the way that you changed the church background in the wedding. One thing that I would add to that though, is a very slight shadow around the edge of the dress on the floor. That will make the dress look like it is part of the picture. Other than that though, it looks really good.:thumbsup:

welcome to RP, dolce man.

the problem with your current work is that it looks like you didnt 'find the image' first. on faded images like this i find it best to bring out as much detail as possible and do a little luminance balancing/correcting.

i'm posting an example of what i'm talking about here. on this image i first ran a brightness/contrast adjustment layer of about +5 brightness, +50 contrast. that's just to bring out more detail.

i next put a hue/sat adjustment layer over that last one and desaturated the image and adjusted the lightness down just a touch.

then, i did a copy merge and paste as new layer.

to that i ran the 'clarify' filter, which is sort of a specialized shadows/midtones/highlights filter.

and that's it for a start. that gives you much more detail to work with. the down side is that is also highlights some of the damage, but i find that good in most ways, as i want to really see what's there.

oh, and to handle the damage at the bottom, that's going to be clone, mostly.

ya know what, forget what i just said. i must have been looking at the wrong piece. your progress looks very good. lol. sometimes i just go stupid-blind.

you could try some airbrushing, low density, soft brush, low opacity... very low and do this on a blank layer to allow for cleanup and corrections. for example, on the man's coat, on the dark, you could sample the part that is good and color/airbrush the part with the white stains. do this a little at a time. dont try for all in one pass.

Wow, thanks to everyone for the feedback thus far, it’s very much appreciated.

Cathy, I believe it was a photograph, but it looks and feels like a cloth material, so I don’t know. It’s in such bad shape now it’s hard to tell. I’ve never used Neat Image but I’ve seen it mentioned in here enough, I think I’ll download the trial version and check it out. Thank you for the comment on my other work.

DC, what you did looks great. I’m not very experienced with the Dodge and Burn tools. I tried dodging the spots out but that didn’t work so well - did you get rid of them by a combination of blurring and cloning? I do like how the hair and moustache looked after I burned them a bit. Definitely need to spend more time with these tools. Also, how did you get the image so light after duplicating the layer and setting it to Multiply? Thank you for looking at my other work.

Dave, I messed around with the channel mixer. Channels is another area I’m not as familiar with as I probably should be. Just curious, how did you determine that the green channel had the least useful information? I ask because, well, they all looked like crap to me :) I do agree about replacing the background altogether though, and I like the oval idea. Thanks for your comments on my other work, that one with the altered church background was a tough one. I’ve been meaning to revisit it for a while now to fix a couple things, good call on the lack of shadow around the edge of the dress. By the way, the groom in that pic is the son of the folks in the image I originally posted about :)

Craig, I really like the difference your suggestions make as far as bringing out more detail. I can’t believe I’ve worked with Photoshop as much as I have over the last few years and yet I’ve not really utilized so many of the most basic functions. This is making me want to go back and tweak a lot of stuff to see how I can improve it :) Question, do you know if there’s anything in Photoshop similar to the Clarify filter you used?

Thanks again to all for the feedback, I will put it to use and see what I come up with and then post the results. I work slowly though, so bear with me….

John

The best way to use the channel mixer, is experiment with the sliders. What you are looking for at while doing this is the combination that keeps the most useful information, and discards the least useful information. In your case, I was looking for the best contrast that I could get. Sometimes it is getting rid of noise, that can sometimes be isolated more to one channel than others. After you do a few, you will start to see what you are looking for, and can get it with less fiddling.

Hi John,

As I said I made a duplicate layer and set it to multiply. You can adjust the layer opacity. On your picture I used the pen tool to select the person and then inverted the selection and used the dodge tool to lighten the background and I used the burn tool on the suit. CS3 has a new selection tool that I used on their Beta version--haven't purchased CS3 yet--that would make the selection very easy. Since I worked on it in parts I started with the dodge tool; however, I probably would have been easier and quicker if I had selected the man at one time and just filled the area with white or whatever I wanted for a background. On the hair, flower, eyebrows, I did use the burn tool. Remember, in PS if you use a tool and the result is too much you can go to IMAGE>Fade and reduce the effect; however, you have do this as your next step or you will lose this choice.

Question, do you know if there’s anything in Photoshop similar to the Clarify filter you used? well, i have photoshop installed, but i dont use it much yet, so i cant really tell you for sure. what it tends to do is bring out highlights and darken shadows for some nice contrast. so, using photoshop's shadows/midtones/highlights could probably get you a similar end result with a bit of tweaking.

Hi,

after clonestamping, on softlight blended layer levels-auto, burned hair and dodged faces, linearlight blended layer highpass 9.6 black layer mask dodged over details

saby

Well I decolorized it using the red channel since that seemed to be the best channel. Next I used Neat Image to remove some of the artifacts.

After that I selected the folks and extracted them to a new layer and created a new background.

For further noise removal I copied the folks layer and used surface blur and to that layer I used a layer mask to control what became blurred.

I added a few outlines in

I finally added a sepia tone back into the image.

Here is something quick I put together.
- cropped
- cloned /healed out the stains
- made a selection around the subjects
- adjusted with curves to bring back some detail
- inversed the selection
- blurred the background
- changed to black and white using Gradient map and levels
- used Hue/Saturation colorize to add a sepia tone
- add a very light soft focus with gaussian blur
- dodged / burned certain areas on the faces

...I think that was it....

Anyway, this is just a quick method to get decent results

Thank you again for your clarifications and detailed explanations. What you‘ve all done with the image looks great. Phil I wish I had that Surface Blur tool, looks like I need to consider upgrading from CS ;-) I’ve downloaded a demo version of Neat Image, I just haven’t had a chance to check it out or do much at all with any of these new techniques, I’ve had a lot on my plate this week. I’m looking forward to putting in some serious exploration time over the weekend though…

Ok here’s my attempt using some of the techniques you’ve all described. I started from scratch with the original image rather than tweak my earlier attempt.

First off, Neat Image rocks, I love what it does. It really makes a huge difference. The demo version only works on an image area of 1024 x 1024 pixels (I think) so I cropped the image and worked mainly on the man’s head and face. I’m not very organized when working in Photoshop as far as labeling layers and keeping track of adjustments as I go so I can’t exactly remember specifics, but basically after cropping the image I applied Neat Image using the default settings and made some channel mixer adjustments. It seemed that the green channel had the least amount of blemishes or artifacts in the face so I mostly used that channel, then I bumped up the contrast a good bit while lowering the brightness a little. I dodged out the background (something I’ve never tried before) and then used the burn tool to darken the hair and fill in parts of the mustache and eyebrows. I wasn’t happy with the results I was getting using the dodge tool to lighten the face, so I resorted mostly to the clone tool set to either lighten or darken to smooth out the differences in shading. I removed the spots and fixed the eyebrow the same way. I also roughly selected the right side of the nose, flipped it and tweaked it to add a little bit of detail on the left side. Just a little shadow really. Lastly I duplicated the layer and set it to Soft Light at 60% for a last bit of highlight/shadow adjustment, and then duplicated the layer again, applied the high pass filter, set the layer to Linear Light, added a layer mask and painted over a few areas for added sharpness. I think that’s about it….

dolce, excellent! that's a great improvement :) and i'm quite happy to see that you followed the first rule of restoration, 'DO NO DAMAGE'.

ok, stage 2: on your current work, you've still got a couple things left to do. his right cheek is a bit blown out. it's a bit too bright. you could burn it darker, use a lighten/darken tool or use a brush. i generally prefer the airbrush. make a new blank layer over your existing ones. take your airbrush and set it to about 3-5 opacity. set the density down below 50. and pick your color/shade from the existing face. pick something slightly darker than what you're going to paint over. you want to shade this area a bit. since you're on a blank layer, nothing you do is going to hard your other layers. if you overspray you can either undo or use a light opacity eraser, like around 5 opacity. the eraser brush is also a good way to just clean up edges that get sprayed that you want to clean up.

once you've got a bit of spray on and things look halfway decent, blur this layer with a gausian blur. doesnt have to be much and depends on how well you've covered the area. so, could be anywhere from 1 to 24 or so. just try a few different settings. this will effectively shadow that side of the face.

next, the shirt is still streaked. you can go several ways on this. you can add noise or paint to smooth this out or you could clone/smudge. either way can be effective.

and lastly, though you may not be ready for this yet if the rest of the image isnt done, i'd do something with the background, a texture, a gradient or even a blurred backdrop type image. this will soften the harshness of all that black and white.

and here you thought you were done ;)

Had to try this picture too.

PSP Photo XI:

Clarify, Sharpening with large radius, Noise removal and lots of cloning...and then some more cloning. Last part was to add some noise.

Hey thanks Craig, and oh yeah, I know I'm far from done with this one ;-) In fact I'll have to start all over again to do the whole image - this is more of a learning experience right now.

Ok I added the shading to the right cheek, and a little to his chin while I was at it. I think it still needs work. As far as the shirt, I did mess with it a little in my previous attempt but all I did was copy it to a new layer and burn the outlines of the collar and tie a bit, then I copied it again, blurred it, set it to Screen and lowered the opacity. It smoothed out the streaks a little and brightened the shirt but you're right, it needs more work. So I tried both of your suggestions.

I copied the shirt again to a new layer and smudged it up real good, then I added a little bit of noise so it matches the rest of the image. I also went back and added a mask to the layer with the burned outlines, filled it with black and then painted just the outlines back in (since I had pretty much smudged them away in the layer below), and while I was at it I added in the collar on the right side since it was pretty much not there at all. That could still be tweaked a little more.

I tried adding a blurred backdrop-type background, not crazy about it but it's better than white.

That's it for now, thanks for the feedback :)

John

zekeode, that looks really good. It's a hell of an image, isn't it? I also like what saby, Phil & Rocco did with it. I think I'm cloning away too much detail with my attempts, I don't know. It's too smooth or something...

...I think I'm cloning away too much detail with my attempts, I don't know. It's too smooth or something...

Hi John,

I think there are more det. on the retouched and desaturated image, good job

saby

dolce,

lookin better and better.

his whole right side (camera left) is still quite bright. you could do a mask/selection and add noise or airbrush it.

i'm sorta working along on this also and looking at your posts in psp xi. i ended up masking the entire face and setting this as a selection on a new layer and adding gausian noise, monochrome and then blurring that layer to smooth it a bit. i then changed the noise type and did it again and blurred it again. i also did some erasing on the lighter parts with an eraser brush set at 5 or below. make sure if you go this way that you either mask out the eyes or do a heavy erase over them when you finish the noise and blurring to bring that detail back out.

Hi dolce man,

I had to have a quick go at your photo too, something about it caught my eye. You've done a great job, as have all the others. I didnt restore so much as give some highlights with dodge-burn, clone and heal brushes, clone out the lines and discoloration/fading on the bottom, painted in a little in white areas and used dissolve on yet other layers to add back texture to some smoothed out spots, desaturated and added back some sepia.

I liked the painterly look of the picture over-all after bringing up the levels, so kept it, but then I'm not trying to do a restoration of family photos. I think that's what I liked best about it (I'm an artist first, photo restorer second). This one has just the look of charcoals I used to enjoy doing.

Janice

Good grief, in the last few weeks I haven't had a whole two minutes to spend on this image, so much other stuff going on. Craig and Saby though, thanks for the encouragement. I guess the thing with his right cheek, it seems like there should be more shadow on his left cheek because of the angle of his face, and when I was trying to add it to his right side it just seemed like it was making everything too uniform. Although it could be because I just wasn't doing it right - working with shadows and shading and stuff, I'm not really sure what the heck I'm doing. I don't really have an artist's background, sketching and all that. I'm sure that would come in handy with retouching. Speaking of artists, Janice I like the charcoal look, particularly the one to the right. I suspect this image was originally the result of an artistic rather than a photographic endeavor anyway the more I look at it. One question, how did you use Dissolve to add texture?

dolce,

dont worry too much about the right cheek/side, but if you want to try it, take your airbrush tool and set the density way down, like 20 to 30 or so. set the opacity to 5 or less and set your brush size to something a little less than the area you want to cover. i dont know what brush types you have, so just use the default.

with those settings, dont stroke the paint on; dab it. just dab, dab, dab and follow that in a line up the side of his face. it may be hard to see at first and you may have to adjust those settings a bit too. if you stroke it on you'll tend to get a streaky looking thing. what you want is shadow and a bit of a grainy/texture look. it takes some practice, but it's a fairly easy way to get a decent result.