Hi everyone! I'm working on my first "paid-for-by-someone-other-than-my-family" restoration job. The picture is from my local historical society -- they found it in the cellar of one of the historic homes in this area, and it was pretty badly damaged. I'm still in the process of working on it, but I thought I'd post the original and what I've done with it so far to see if any of you have any tips or pointers on what might be the next step.

Thanks much for any advice you might have for me.

BigKid

p.s. The original picture is roughly 12x16 in size. I had to scan it in in 3 separate sections.

Hi BigKid

This is deffinently one that could use copying with a camera to see past the silvering (reflective haze in the dark areas)!

The examples I am posting are not perfect! They were done on a laptop with a touchpad, they are posted as some ideas on how to appoach the problem - hopfully some of the will be of help ;)

Instead of darkening down I started by lightening up and evening out ...

1st screen shot) created new layer, pasted in red channel because I thought it was the cleanest and held the most dark detail.

2nd screen shot) Then I nopticed that the faces were a little light, the original photo had good face detail so I duped the background, moved to top - changed bled mode to luminosity to remove color, then masked out all except faces and varied on each face to try and even the out.

3rd screen shot) Curves layer to increase contrast in faces, grouped with layer below that in asked to faces so as not to have to paint in another mask, then reduced opacity - added another curves layer to adjust other tones....

4th screen shot) I wanted to darken the ground, I went into the channels of the background layer and saw that the blue channel had the best ground. Created new blank layer and used Apply Image to paste in backgrounds blue channel, masked it to just the ground. Added color fill layer in color blend mode to give it a color easier to look at.

5th screen shot) Final image (as far as I got), I didn't go in close to work any detail, just overall roughed in seeing image at full screen. Rest was curves, overlay and adjustment layers as described in screen shot in next post ...

continued ....

Edit: I noticed that the images didn't arrange in the order I uploaded them, but if you hover over each one you will see what I named the image. First screen shot ends in 01, secend in 02, etc. ;)

.... and here we are again ;)

last screen shot is the layers of the 'not really final' final.

Hope some of these ideas are a help!

Roger

Hi,

BigKid,

This is quite a difficult picture to work on and I think you did a great job on it already!!!

Roger

..simply great!! I downloaded the picture just before going to bed last night and started 'playing' with it but didn't come even closer to your result! (I tried to darken the faded parts but wasn't happy about it!)

:wavey:

Wow, Roger! thank you so much for all your help!! I'm going to have to carefully read through what you did (still trying to figure out procedures like isolating channels, etc), so I can learn from what you did. I can't believe the detail you were able to get out of the background on the left side (where all the silvering was...)!

While you were plugging away at my historical society project, I forged ahead and came up with what I think is probably complete. You'll see I went for darkening the background, because I could't figure out how to get any detail out of it, let alone get rid of the silvering. You'll see I got some good detail in the people, but the picture is a bit dark overall. I'm trying to figure out how to lighten it up a bit without getting all sorts of artifacts.

here's where I landed with it. Let me know what you think!!

Bigkid

p.s. Notice the light-colored object in the lower left side of the picture. That can't possibly be a human skull, could it??

Flora -- Thanks for the encouragement. Check out the pic i just posted. Any advice? Thanks!!

Flora, Thanks!

BigKid,

p.s. Notice the light-colored object in the lower left side of the picture. That can't possibly be a human skull, could it??

Looking at the size of it campared to the people I think it is something laying on the raised walkway, maybe canvas wrapped around something for carrying that is about 2 feet long and 8" in diameter with the end pointing at us ;) close crop attached. although a skull might be more interesting;)

This is a difficult photo and you are doing a great job. I posted because I understand the direction you were headed in of darkening down (been there and done that) and wanted to throw another alternative into the mix ;)

Channels:

I suggest until you get used to channels, seperate the layers window and the channels pallette so that you can see how the channels change as you work on the layers ...

To use a channel: After viewing the channels in the channels pallette to see ahat they look like go to the layers pallette, create a new blank layer. Do menu Image>Apply Image, set Source to the image you are working on, Layer to Background or whetever layer or merged you want to use, but background in this case. It is OK to keep the blend mode on multipy see it is reacting to a blank layer multiply does the same thing as normal. Then click OK and the channel is pasted into the layer. Mask and use whatever you want of it.

Detail in background: I didn't really bring out any detail in the background - I roughed it in using the clone and healing tools. I first picked out what sections 'looked' like they could be real detail - the window I used which appears three more times thanks to the clone tool is in the attached photo.

Another technique I find real usefull is turning off 'alligned' on the clone and healing brush. The corner of buildings was created by selecting a source point right above a hat that looked like good corner material and then with that source point stationary (alligned unchecked) just a bunch of clicking overlaps working my way up, was a little sloppy - it leans to the left a little - but you get the idea. A whole are can be cleaned up by selecting one litle spot and cloning it into the surrounding area.

Hope this is all good!

Roger