I have a photo that I have done the basic things I know how .. adjust levels, dirt and noise, etc.. But it always leaves the face almost completely washed out. I am hoping that somebody could give some suggestions on this picture?

http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/thumbs/small/1141602_7trm3/scan0001.jpg (http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/view/full/1141602_7trm3)

The image is too small to give any advise. Please upload a larger image or link to a larger image.
~Nancy

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www.PhotoArt123.com

My apologies, the larger file is there, the link just pointed to the thumbnail :( Here is the larger picture:

http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/1141602_7trm3/scan0001.jpg

Thanks

The image is too small to give any advise. Please upload a larger image or link to a larger image.
~Nancy

____________________________


www.PhotoArt123.com

A better scan would do wonders for this picture.. If you scanned this.. I would RE-scan and turn off all automatic stuff and scan at the highest resolution

I agree. The problem is that my scan is from my grand aunt in California who took it to Walgreens, made a photo copy and mailed it to me. I do not turn on any automatic settings for my scans as I do a pretty good job of the basics that those don't matter.

The issue is that the source I have just simply sucks :( I only found out that my grand aunt was alive about 1 month ago, but I plan on getting down to her place within the next year and take my scanner with me :)

A better scan would do wonders for this picture.. If you scanned this.. I would RE-scan and turn off all automatic stuff and scan at the highest resolution

what does the original un-edited photo look like can you post that.

what does the original un-edited photo look like can you post that.

Here it is in all of its washed out gory
http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/1141735_7ptdi/johnarthur.jpg

Here is my try..
duped the original and made about 6 multiple layers to darken uniform
threw in a couple gradient masks from top down to even things out a bit
made a HDR from the original and tone mapped it very dark just looking at face
combined and masked tone mapped face to show through
Desaturated
Polaroid dust and scratch remover twice (once for white and once for dark)
ran through Imagenomic Noiseware at default with some minor corrections
Photoshop dust and scratch with a hide all mask and with small brush went over the remaining spots to remove them
posted here

Just tried to burn a little shading into face... unfortunately i'm no artist!
Tried a colourised version as well.

The face is blown out in many places so there is no option outside of creating a blank layer and brushing in a light color of your choice, or maybe burning as suggested, but nothing will create any detail in the face which I think is the biggest issue here. The overall image can be improved pretty quickly by replacing the weaker channel with the stronger channel but again there's no detail to be had in this image in parts of the face.

Try scanning it TWICE once for higlights once for shadow detail then sandwich them together

Also remember if there is no information there then trying to put it in might make the highlights muddy looking

Here is my try

I used curve.

Here is my try

I used curve.

Nice! that seemed to bring out the most detail in the face thus far. I tried curves just now and am not getting the same. Any suggestions?

Just tried to burn a little shading into face... unfortunately i'm no artist!
Tried a colourised version as well.

How do you colourize? I would love to try that out sometime. Good job, only slight criticism is that he is black hence his skin tone should be darker :)

Try scanning it TWICE once for higlights once for shadow detail then sandwich them together

Also remember if there is no information there then trying to put it in might make the highlights muddy looking

No idea how I would scan for highlights vs scanning for shadow detail. The scan seems to produce the same picture all of the time.

Hi my try,

several multiply copies on top, curves and highpass - only looking for face details though

Here's a shot.

ok, let's take this in steps. whenever you see an image like this which is blown out from poor exposure at the time taken or from damage over time, you want to look at the histogram. if you dont know what a histogram is, it's time to get out the photoshop or paint shop pro dictionaries and find out. it's important.

at first, i actually tried levels but soon realized from looking at that that the histogram was messed up. so, we correct for that first. in this image, all data were to the right and scrunched up. that's not good. that means that all your data areas are not filled. it's sort of like compressing all the light data down into one area of your light palette. i'm using a metaphor here, so bear with me. and the solution is to un-scrunch it, separate it back out to the rest of the palette of the histogram. you want data, in this particular case, to be spread out across the histogram. the tool for this is the histogram adjustment tool. photoshop and paint shop pro both have this tool.

ok, first we make a duplicate of the background layer on top of the background layer. to the duplicate we call up the histogram adjustment tool. and you'll see what i'm talking about that the data are all in one area, not spread out like they shld be. so, i simply moved the left most slider over to just left of the where the actual data starts. and then i adjusted the middle slider a bit. in Paint Shop Pro, there is another slider on the right side, a vertical slider. i moved this up quite a bit. then i simply adjusted all sliders more finely to give me what i wanted. i didnt move the gamma adjustment at all. and i didnt move the top or bottom limiters either.

now, remember, this is just a first step. this is simply adjusting the light levels back to something like when the photo was taken. it does NOT correct the blown out face, though it does bring out some detail. and this is all just the first step and a very easy step. we'll attempt to correct the face and other blown out areas separately in another step.

also bear in mind that my monitor's gamma may be a touch off right now since i was using it for something else today and havent reset it yet. but this shld be close enough to show you what i've done.

and here's a screenshot of the histogram adjustment tool in use. and when i mentioned those first sliders, i meant those little triangles below the histogram. they act like a levels adjust.

notice the histo data are like i said, scrunched up and over on the right.

ok, now this is after the histo adjust and with the histo sliders reset to 0. notice how the data is now more spread out across the spectrum.

i'm a little surprised more folks dont use this very versatile tool more often.

How do you colourize? I would love to try that out sometime. Good job, only slight criticism is that he is black hence his skin tone should be darker :)

esac

I colourise by adding curves adjustment layer for different elements of the picture - skin, eyes, clothes etc. I then adjust the curves until I reach the colour I want. This approach means that it is a fairly simple thing to return to a picture and alter one part, eg. skin tone, as it's on it's own layer.
There are many other methods to achieve a good result

i tried a number of things to bring back the skin tone on his face. what i ended up doing was a simple airbrush on a blank layer. i then gaussian blurred that layer and erased a bit here and there and then repeated the entire process till i was more or less happy with it.

when i had that done, you said he was Black, and that raised an interesting question; how light or dark? what i had with the airbrushing seemed a touch light. it was hard to tell from the image how light or dark to go, so i just opted for something medium. my airbrushing was a bit too light for medium, so i copy merged my layers and pasted to a new layer. i then set my burn brush to slightly larger than this facial area and set the opacity around 18 and swiped across the whole face in one stroke, darkening the whole up with one pass. that looked pretty good, so i stuck with that.

during all this i also made another layer and airbrushed the top portion of his uniform a bit darker. the histogram did a fair job, but not quite enough in that area, so i simply set a light airbrush and went over that area on a blank layer.

i also airbrushed his tie and shirt area a bit.

and i did some minor cloning on another blank layer to get rid of small dust spots and such.

and that was pretty much it.

to colorize the image, i'd suggest looking up Vikki's tutorial on this or going to the Worth1000 pages and find their tutorial. i think that's the one Vikki uses. it's quite good.

and, if you wanted to give it one last little punch up, try a clarify filter at around 4 to 6:

There was a bit of noise so I used the FFT and from there adjusted the level. Applied image - multipy at 50%. Used OptikVerve for the sepia look that so many like but I also like the old B/W. I've given you both and you can compare to the original.

I've worked on so many, many soldiers over the years and each one holds a special place in my heart.

I used a red channel to work on the face area.
After a curve adjustment some noise appeared. I applied a dust & scratches filter to the individual specks. I have kept the eyes almost unattached.

I used a red channel to work on the face area.
After a curve adjustment some noise appeared. I applied a dust & scratches filter to the individual specks. I have kept the eyes almost unattached.

Now go in and clean up the dust specks. Healing tool works well or you can

duplicate the layer
run the dust and scratch filter until you no longer see the dust
Go to Layer - select layer mask> hide all
and use a small white brush to remove the dust specks.

I did some on your picture but not all. Very good job!