Is there a way to remove the texture from an old photo that is part of the texture of the paper, and yet retain sharp details? The texture is a pattern seen in many old photographs. You may not see it in the photo.. and I have made the main photo smaller to upload here (you can see it there). larger version available if needed.

Any advice and assistance is appreciated.

Hi Vespeera

Welcome to RetouchPro! It's pretty hard not to lose at least a little detail but with your pic, I masked the eyes and mouth and applied small increments of Neat Image. With the mask still in place I applied a Gaussian Blur, just enough so I could still see just a bit of texture. Very carefully with a blur brush, I worked the eyes and mouth. Flora's better at this kind of stuff but I hope this helps.

Cheers
Dave

Hi Dave, thank you for the welcome! I did a search for Neat Image and found it. From your description, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to remove this texture (I am not too experienced with with graphics). If Neat Image is the way to go, what part, or filter of the Neat Image program did you use, and can something similar be done in Photoshop (besides the masking)?

I have a smilar issue. My cousin passed away last month and the best photo they could find for her memorial site was a farily recent photo of her which was originally a two-shot of her with her ex-husband. They had removed his image and then printed her photo against a (*caugh* chessy) background on textured paper.

I cleaned it up as best I could, but it's low res and I'm not terribly good at it. Anybody want to try their hand at it?

Vespeera,

If you don't have Neat Image as Duv suggests try the Blur tool set at about 75% strength. Use a smaller brushe for the eye area. I used an empty layer with an overlay blending mode to paint over the features ala Flora and finished with USM

K

Hi Vespeera

Welcome to RetouchPRO! :pleased:

Great help from Dave and Ken!! :bigthmb: (if you haven't done it already, you can download the free version od Neat Image here (http://www.neatimage.com/download.html)

I had a go at your picture and used a combination of Photoshop Gaussian Blur and Neat Image trying to minimize the texture without smoothing too much and losing too many details.

I duplicated the Background Layer twice.
On the first duplicate I run Neat Image (defaul settings).
On the second duplicate (on top) I run Gaussian Blur, added some noise and adjusted its Opacity. I, then, added a Layer Mask and, with a soft black brush, I painted over eyes, nose and mouth to uncover those sharper features from the underlying 'Neat Image' Layer.
Merged Visible.
Created a Levels Adjustment Layer to improve contrast.
Created a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer (colorize option checked) to give a light tint to the picture.
Added a little Noise + Soft Gaussian Blur (radius = 0.3-5).
Created a New empty Layer > Blending Overlay and with a soft black/white Brush (Opacity 10-20%) I painted over areas I wanted to emphisize/highlight.
I further enhanced the contrast using Unsharp Mask (Amount>20%, Radius>50, Threshold>0).
I finally sharpened the image using USM.


Hope this helps...

:wavey:

Wow! I am very impressed with those results Flora, thank you. And thanks to Dave and Ken too. I will try these methods. Thank you all for your excellent help. This site is a treasure!

WOW, I am really impressed. I tried to do something similiar with Floras instructions but I was only able to achieve something like in attachment.

It would be nice if you could show us some step-by-step pictures :) I do not know what i did wrong.

Hi everybody,

thanks for the great feedback! :happy:

suchyy,

Great result! ... I'm sure you didn't do anything 'wrong' ... you might have remained a bit too 'soft' in the blurring/Neat image settings .... You could try to use the 'Blur Tool' (adjusting Tool and Layer Opacity) on the areas which still show some of the original texture.

Mark,

...resolution and size wern't the best to work on... but I had a try at your picture as well, using more or less the same technique for minimizing the texture ...

:wavey:

Thanks Flora. Your version looks very good. I'm going to have to go back to that image and see if I can't get radical on it. The size and resolution were not good. I wrote my other cousin (the decedent's sister) about getting me a copy of the original but I never got any reply. Even if she had been able to get me an original, I don't think it was much bigger or better.

I just wonder if somebody didn't hack the retouch and print it on textured paper to help hide the shortcomings.

Again thanks, you did a terrific job. :grin:

Made a dup copy
selected each channel> Gauss.blur>Noice>median>USM

Mark,

thanks for your great feedback and so glad you liked my version of your picture!
I just wonder if somebody didn't hack the retouch and print it on textured paper to help hide the shortcomings.

.... If somebody did that .... they'll never admit it .... :D

Manjumena,

Great job in removing the texture :bigthmb:.... a bit too soft in the details .... maybe...

:wavey:

Since we're all here to learn, I decided to have another go using much of Flora's superb technique although I did have to mask out the eyes and mouth and work a little more on careful blurring and sharpening. In any case, I think you'll agree that it is far superior to my first effort thanks to Flora.
Flora, luv to see a tut from you on this detailing more precisely what you did.

Cheers
Dave

Good job Dave! I agree, a precise tutorial on removing photo-texture paper with details and pictures would be great, but I am grateful for the instructions already given. It would be nice to be able to do it without Neatimage though. There is little I can find on the web about this, hence my question here. You guys/gals are wonderful!

Dave,

Great job!!!!! :bigthmb: :bigthmb: ....

Since we're all here to learn...
I learn from everyone and every picture I work on .... That's the magic of RetouchPRO!!!

Vespeera,

..... I was trying to sneak out of writing a tutorial :D :D ....
Could I use your picture (it's just perfect for it) to write one?
Thanks in advance ....

:wavey:

Could I use your picture (it's just perfect for it) to write one?

Flora, The photo does not belong to me, and unfortunately I can't get permission from the owner of the photo for a tutorial, only for this question, which to my view is like a tutorial anyway. :sad:

Hi Vespeera,

No problem :) ....I'll look at what I have ... or maybe, someone here has a similar picture I could use ....

:wavey:

You might want to take a look at this http://gimel.esc.cam.ac.uk/james/resources/undither/

Not figured out how to get it working yet but the results look impressive! Help would be greatly appreciated ;)

Is it something you can download and try?

Does it work as 'stand alone' or plug-in?

....Yes, the results do look impressive!!!!

Thanks for the link!!!

:wavey:

That's what I'm not sure of Flora! I think you need to download something else to get that to work, it does mention http://www.fftw.org/ but it all seems very complicated. I'll keep sifting through the information though as it looks very useful if you can get it working.

Let's hope that someone else here can shed some light on it for us :)

Flora, I have a perfect image you are free to use for a tutorial. It is a picture of my mother and the only major problem with it is the honeycomb texture. I have been fairly successful using my new scanner to get rid of the texture but I would be more than happy to get the original/unaltered scan to you. I have posted the scan below. The attachment is only 100k of course, but you can see the texture quite easily. If you would like to use this for a tut just let me know how to get it to you (what size, resolution, format, etc.) I can FTP or e-mail up to 10MB.

I added a cropped version so the texture is more visible.

Hi FrannyMae,

What a beautiful lady!!!!!

Thank you so much .... your mother's picture is just perfect!!!! Even if only 100kb it's very clear and, as you said, 'you can see the texture quite easily' ... I'll start working on the tutorial immediately and let you know as soon as it's up...

Thanks again ...

Take care.

:wavey:

Flora, I'm glad you'll be able to use the picture. She was a very lovely lady and this is one of only two picture I have of her as a young lady. Luckily they have both been well cared for (compared to some I have seen!) I do plan on working on this one myself and enlarging from the original 3x5 to possibly 8x10...wish me luck!

FrannyMae, I'm sure you'll do a beautiful job!!!!

If you'd like to exchange techniques, methods etc. , please don't hesitate to contact me...

I'd really love to see your end result!!!

:wavey:

.....but it all seems very complicated...
This stuff is from the rocket science end of image processing. To use these programs you'd have to be fluent in C/C++, Fast Fourier transforms, Unix/Linux, compilers, etc...., and get used to having no user interface at all. If you want to make you own "Neat Image" plug-in or develop "Photoshop 9.0" this is the place to be.

So until somebody takes these magic "low-level" processes and turns them into a user-friendly (comercial) tool, they're going to be out of reach for just about everybody around here.
(I graduated in this general area - a long time ago, but this stuff scares me off!)

Meanwhile, we'll just have to learn to be expert users of Photoshop.

Rô

FrannieMae, what a lovely picture! It's perfect too, as far as the honeycomb texture problem.

I look forward to the tutorial Flora, I am sorry I could not get permission for the other photo.

This stuff is from the rocket science end of image processing. To use these programs you'd have to be fluent in C/C++, Fast Fourier transforms, Unix/Linux, compilers, etc...., and get used to having no user interface at all. If you want to make you own "Neat Image" plug-in or develop "Photoshop 9.0" this is the place to be.

So until somebody takes these magic "low-level" processes and turns them into a user-friendly (comercial) tool, they're going to be out of reach for just about everybody around here.
(I graduated in this general area - a long time ago, but this stuff scares me off!)

Meanwhile, we'll just have to learn to be expert users of Photoshop.

Rô

That's a shame
:(

Hi everybody,

So until somebody takes these magic "low-level" ... in my case, even that wouldn't be "low enough" .... :D

Fascinated by the results, I ventured a bit deeper .... :confused: :eek: :confused:

It would be nice if someone could create a 'Rosetta Stone' for these hieroglyphs :o:

:wavey:

That program is a bit tricky to use but there is a Photoshop filter which can do FFT/IFFT and can be used to give similar results, get it here: http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~avc25/archive.htm To use this you run the filter on the image, look for bright "stars" on the output channels, clone them out and then perform the IFFT. This works better if you use the HSB/HSL<->RGB conversion filter to convert to HSB before editing, then convert back just before the IFFT. I've attached the result of applying this technique to the original image. This took less than five minutes to do.

The second image is the result after general repair and contrast adjustment.

WoW!

great result :)

Double Wow!!

This is what I got in 2 minutes. Just the filter and levels adjustment. It takes just a wee bit of experimentation in cloning out the stars. The better you get the better the result. Eveyone should have this plugin.

Cheers
Dave

Here's my effort, used the filter, cloned out the stars, duplicated the background, a little noise, blur and masked the eyes, mouth, nose and eyebrows. Finally levels, USM at 20/50 to increase the contrast and then USM again to sharpen.

Wow .... I'm really impressed with the results everybody got!!!!

I've just downloaded the plug-in and, I guess, I know what I'll be doing today!!! :D

Hi tzec,

Welcome to RetouchPRO! :pleased:

What an entrance!!!! :bigthmb:

Thank you so much for sharing the link and your results ....

Looking forward to your next post!!

I downloaded Neat Image from the link, but I still cant seem to run Neat Image from my duplicate layer......help?

Hi JohnnyT,

Welcome to RetouchPRO! :pleased:

The free version of Neat Image comes without the Photoshop Plug-In .... in other words, it can be used as a Stand Alone program only ....

In this Tutorial (http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=138) you will find instructions on how to use it .... just scroll down the page to the NEAT IMAGE STAND ALONE part...

Hope this helps.

Hi Flora!

Did you ever end up doing a tutorial on how to get rid of Honeycomb texutre?

I'd love a link to it if you did.

Hope all is going well for you.

Nat

Flora,

Did a search and found it!

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=140

You are groovealicious!

Hi Nat!!

So nice to 'see' you again!!! :pleased: :pleased:

My Tutorial was written a long time ago ... before I had discovered the FFT Filter wich can really work magic on removing Honeycomb texture ...

You can find everything on it ... even the link to the site where the FFT plug-in can be downloaded in this excellent Tutorial (http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=185) .. and needless to say ... just 'yell' if you need more help .. :pleased:

Hope everything is well for you too.

Take care.

Hey Flora!

Nice to 'see' you again as well. :wavey: No rolling blackouts right now in your life I hope :grin:

Yes I found that FFT tutorial and am reading it now and just downloaded the plugin. I am just playing with the border. I am working on a hi-res image (400dpi) and I used a 250px 'Stroke' of 128/128/128 Gray. Is that correct? It's to get rid of the ringing effect that you guys ran in to.

I've attached a section of the portrait for you to see. It's honeycomb city!

I also posted in another thread about the Decrack action (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showpost.php?p=113724&postcount=23) I am trying to use. I wish I could figure out how to fix it so I can run the action. The image has a ton of cracks.

Thanks as always for the brilliant help Flora!

Nat

Hi again,

... still sporadically fighting against 'blackouts' .. but, fortunately, very seldom and not as prolonged as the previous ones ... :happy:

I had the same problem with the Decrack Action .... It seems to be 'programmed' to work on the 'background' ... so ... what I did was:

After other corrections ... I 'Created a new document from the current state' .. and flattened the new document so that it has only the background ... Run the action on it ...

The Action can minimize/remove either light cracks (using the 'Minimun' Filter) or dark cracks (using the 'Maximum Filter) ... so I duplicated the action renaming them to Decrack Light/Dark and eliminating from their steps the part I didn't need ... ie: the 'Miminum' Step when removing the dark cracks ... and the 'Maximum' Step when removing light cracks ...

Hope this helps ...

OOOppppsss ... forgotten...

After running the Decrack action on the newly created document, you can alway Shift+drag the Decrack Layer to your original working document...

Hey Flora,

Thanks for the tips on how to use the Decrack Action. I will refer back to what you said when I am at that step.

I tried the FFT Plugin and Tutorial and got a strange, transparent result. Is this because I am using this on a Black and White image? I notice the image in the Turorial by byRo is color.

I did the exact steps of the tutorial and below is what I got as a result. Not sure what I did wrong. The image is black and white, but it is RGB/8.

Original can be seen here (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showpost.php?p=113724&postcount=23)
Below is the post-FFT- see how it is transparent?

Also I am confused on the very first step:
1) Duplicate original image
- Right click on title bar;
- Duplicate (merged, if it has more than one layer) to a new image.

When I right click on my title bar I just get options to make the image full size or minimize or close it. I don't know what he is refering to here. What I did was to make a New Window by going to Window > Arrange > New Window for 'file name'.

Was this incorrect?

Also in the last step:

8) Put the colours back in:
- Slide, with <Shift> pressed (to align), your (now un-textured) luminosity back layer on top of the original (that’s the one we left behind in step 1);
- Set this new layer's blending mode to Luminosity.
- Select your original layer, which is below the new Luminosity layer;
- Apply a small radius (2 or 3 should do) Noise>Median filter (this blurs the colours a little, but don't worry all the important sharpness is in the luminosity layer).


Are we working with two layers in one document here, or are we working with two documents?

Any clarification would be much appreciated!

Nat

Photoshop. sorry about the blackouts. They are such a pain!

Hi Nat,

I'm smiling while I write this ... smiling because getting the 'hang' on using FFT has been one of the most frustrating experience I've had with image manipulation ... and the one that put my patience and stubborness to a very severe test ... :rambo:

But to your questions ...

* FFT can be used on colour and B&W images as long as they are in RGB Mode ... meaning ... presenting all colour channels even if they look about the same ....

* FFT doesn't recognize 'Layers' so it is to be used on a 'flattened' image.

Since this is usually the first thing I do when necessary, I simply duplicate the 'document' therefore 'we' are working with 2 documents, where the one destined to FFT should have the Background Layer only!

* Working on the FFT Document, I increase the Canvas size of 2 to 5 cm. (sorry I'm used to metric sizes... ), choosing grey as its colour. This will help with the blasted 'banding' which, otherwise, would be placed on the image .. (Attachment 1)

* Done that, I run FFT on it ... (I usually go for RGB FFT) ... (Attachment 2) shows the 'stars' I covered on the FFT red channel .... Correct the green channel if necessary ...

IMPORTANT ... Once finished working on the 'stars' in the individual Channels, remember to go back to the composite view by clicking on RGB before running IFFT

* Run IFFT and, if you are satisfied with the result, decrease the canvas' size to return to your original size, Shift+Drag the FFT corrected Background to your working original and, if the image you are working on is in colours, change the blending of the dragged FFT Layer to 'Luminosity' .... this will give you your original colour picture minus the Honeycomb texture!

Hope this helps..

Natalie, nice to see you back. ( :nod: I am listening to your music as I write this :nod: )

When I right click on my title bar I just get options to make the image full size or minimize or close it. I don't know what he is refering to here. What I did was to make a New Window by going to Window > Arrange > New Window for 'file name'.Oops, seems that this little confusion was my fault - I'll be editing the tutorial to correct.

The "Duplicate" option is only there if you are not editing in full-screen mode. I'll change this to the menu option - Image>Duplicate.
We need to duplicate the image to preserve a copy with the colours, because the FFT will throw away this information. The New Window option won't help us here because it creates only a new visualization of the same image.

As to the transparent problem, as Flora said (thanks Flora :wavey: ), this is usually because you haven't selected all channels again before using the inverse FFT.

As to the grey border, there isn't a pre-defined size - adding about 20% more on each side should do the trick. (But, please, don't hate me if it doesn't)

Rô

hi natalie,

welcome home :)

i had a go with your image. i've been experimenting with a new technique on the fft rgb. it's a bit of a twist from other methods but seems to have some promise.

i also ran Paint Shop Pro's digital noise removal on this, psps scratch remover, some clone and push and then AIM's sharpen plugin to finish.

nice picture and good to see you back again. i hope your journeys have been fun and prosperous.

craig

by the way, i used fft rgb, not the normal fft and i run it on the full image and not a channel split. and yes, you can do black and whites with fft rgb. works just fine. the trick is finding where the honeycomb resides. in this particular black and white, it might have been easier with the normal fft, but i've just gotten used to the ease of use of fft rgb, so that's what i use most often.

craig

All I have to say is A-FREAKING-MEN!

This FFT Method is incredible! My friend from Eritrea gave me 27 of her mother's old family pictures to restore, she baiscally said.. 'Nat... do what ya can'! I did one before this one and it took me forever and ever to try to get that honeycomb off the image and it ended up looking way to soft using the other method I was using. I am going to go back to that image and use the FFT Method.

This FFT Method is awe inducing and I am so grateful to have found it!

Flora: Thank you again. You are a veritable garden of wisdom. I love that you share this with us and I have learned an incredible amount from you. I think I must come to Italy, or wherever you are to do a show just for you to thank you! Thank you for explaining the steps you took and for answering my questions! I am going to see about using Neat Image and USM after I have cleaned up the cracks. :)
I see you drew in some lines and also used dots. Can you tell me why you drew the lines?

Rô: Thanks for the welcome back! Glad you are enjoying the songs. Working on a new album at the moment, so hope to fill your ears with some new material by Fall. Thank you for such a great tutorial and for introducing me to this method. It's really wonderful and makes me wish I had paid more attention to Math in school. Math and computer sciences are beautiful things! I am glad you explained how to duplicate the document. It was so silly not to try the menu item for that. I was fixated on clicking the document bar! Can't see the forest for the trees sometimes! LOL

Kraellin: :wavey: Thanks for the welcome home! Been seeing the inside of a studio most days. We are upgrading to Pro Tools this week so I have the week off while the guts of the studio are being reorganized! So yay, I finally get some time to keep honing my skills in the restoration/retouch area I have come to love so much! Good go on the image! What are the tweaks you made when using FFT?

I've posted my FFT Results below with the Before (Attachment 1), During (Attachement 2) and After (Attachment 3).

The banding is there, but I can work with it. Now I must see if I can get any decent results with the Decrack Action and then work away at cloning and reconstructing the torn bits. This is pretty much the worst source image I have ever worked with as far as tears and scratches go. But it's a lot of fun!

Thanks for all the wonderful help. :)

Hi again,

... still sporadically fighting against 'blackouts' .. but, fortunately, very seldom and not as prolonged as the previous ones ... :happy:

I had the same problem with the Decrack Action .... It seems to be 'programmed' to work on the 'background' ... so ... what I did was:

After other corrections ... I 'Created a new document from the current state' .. and flattened the new document so that it has only the background ... Run the action on it ...

The Action can minimize/remove either light cracks (using the 'Minimun' Filter) or dark cracks (using the 'Maximum Filter) ... so I duplicated the action renaming them to Decrack Light/Dark and eliminating from their steps the part I didn't need ... ie: the 'Miminum' Step when removing the dark cracks ... and the 'Maximum' Step when removing light cracks ...

Hope this helps ...

Flora! Yes that did help. I worked from a flattened copy and the Action ran fine.

Below is what I got with a HPF setting of 4. I tried 2 and there were more cracks evident. But with 4 I lost some eye detail on the father. I guess no matter what I am going to have to do a lot of cloning on this one.
See original image (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=29971)

I am interested in what you did with the Action by splitting it. Is there any chance you could mail me the Actions you made or explain how you altered them? I'm a bit confused on how you split them up.

As you can see, the larger, lighter cracks in the image were not affected that much. The smaller ones were reduced noticably though.

Thanks again :)

This FFT technique is quite interesting. However, I find that sometimes when an image doesn't have the honeycomb pattern all over, using this method introduces patterns in the areas not covered by the pattern.

For example with this image:

http://www.sendefladen.dk/retouchpro/honeycomb.jpg

I know it's quite an extreme example, but I simply can't get it to work.

/megl

natalie,

what i've been experimenting with on the fft is cloning over the 'stars' instead of blacking them out. mixed results so far.

craig

... using this method introduces patterns in the areas not covered by the pattern.This is quite true. The FFT technique works on the image as a whole, and so does not detect the presence or not of the pattern.

The best I can suggest, in this case, would be to use a layer mask to exclude the offending (FFT) parts and let the original show through.

Rô

Flora! Yes that did help. I worked from a flattened copy and the Action ran fine.

Below is what I got with a HPF setting of 4. I tried 2 and there were more cracks evident. But with 4 I lost some eye detail on the father. I guess no matter what I am going to have to do a lot of cloning on this one.
See original image (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=29971)

I am interested in what you did with the Action by splitting it. Is there any chance you could mail me the Actions you made or explain how you altered them? I'm a bit confused on how you split them up.

As you can see, the larger, lighter cracks in the image were not affected that much. The smaller ones were reduced noticably though.

Thanks again :)


Natalie, I'll explain over on the other thread :
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showpost.php?p=114217&postcount=26

how to change it so you have light and dark (minimum/maximum). I got it off the tutorial. Don't want to add it here since it's for cracks, not texture.

Have been playing with it most of last night and part of today. I love this action!

hi everyone i blured red and green channels with guassian blur and smart blured blue channel,used history brush on eyes and nose opacity was 35 then after that i desaturated the whole pic thats it

:( I've printed out tutorial, downloaded the FFT plugin from site, twice, because when I go to use it in PSCS, it tells me there is a program error.

I extracted files from the zip, then copied the 2 plugins from BIN file over to plugins with Photoshop. I can see the plugins, but cannot use them.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. :)

Skyarcher:

What I did was to make a FFT Folder within my Photoshop Plugins folder and I extracted the entire distribution into my new Folder.

You have to exit Photoshop and restart the program for the Plugins to be 'visable' and useable.

Hope you get to the bottom of it.

Thanks Natalie, I'll try again. I've restarted Photoshop about 6 times now. I can see the plugins, but when I go to use them, I get program error.

Hopefully I'll get it working soon, this would save me about 5 hours worth of work on the image I'm restoring now. :dizzy:

:depressed
Anyone out there that could give me suggestion as to why I can't use the plugin?

Both plugins are in my plugin file, yes, I've restarted Photoshop til I'm blue in the face, I can click on the plugin, but when I do, it says it cannot complete because of program error.

Any help would be appreciated!

Skyarcher, sorry I don't have any good answers - let's try some questions then:

1) Are you using a MAC or PC? I believe that this FFT doesn't work on MAC's

2) When you say Photoshop CS, that would mean CS1 (and not CS2)?

3) Have you tried downloading and installing the old version of FFT?

4) Have you tried downloading the filter again?

5) When you say that you see the filter - Do you see "FFT RGB" and "IFFT RBG"?

Rô

Nat,

sorry to get back so late :o: .... you'll never believe what happened to me ... Was in my garden, heard a noise from above and looked up .... I saw this very bright beam of light .... felt I was being 'beamed up' .... lost time track ... and when I 'woke' up ... I was sitting at my 'puter and it was today!!!! :confused: :rolleyes: :wink: .... Kidding aside ... I 've been very busy ... and will be for the next two weeks ....
I think I must come to Italy, or wherever you are to do a show just for you to thank you! .... You can't imagine how much I appreciate you saying this!!! :pleased: :pleased: :pleased: .... Your music is already with me whenever I sit at my 'puter' indipendently of which 'corner' of the world I happen to be ...

I'm attaching Decrack_Set.zip, the 'split' Decrack Action which I've also adapted to be used on any Layer containing either the 'merged' image after previous corrections, or only a part/selection of the whole image (i.e. hair, face etc) ....

From the .zip archive, extract Decrack_Set.atn to 'C:Program FilesAdobeAdobe Photoshop CS2PresetsPhotoshop Actions' folder (provided this is where you have installed Photoshop!!) ... Open Photoshop, load Decrack_Set into you actions Palette, click on the small arrow on the right of Decrack_Set and you'll see Decrack Light (for light cracks) and Decrack Dark (for dark cracks) ...

In Attachment 2 you can see the immediate result after running the Decrack Light action on part of your image .... The biggest cracks won't disappear completely, but, by tweaking some of the proposed values you can get very close to that .....

But with 4 I lost some eye detail on the father....By using the action on a duplicated Layer, you can always use a Layer mask to 'hide' the effects of the action on parts of the image you wish to leave untouched ....

..I see you drew in some lines and also used dots. Can you tell me why you drew the lines?... .... just being my old 'lazy' self who gets 'bored to death' with 'blackening out' each star individually ... :D

Skyarcher!

Welcome to RetouchPRO! :pleased:

Sorry to hear you are having troubles using the FFT Plug-in .... I've tried to see if I could get an error message like yours, but no matter what I did ... I never did...
It's really a mystery ...
Just a silly question .... are you working with PC Windows or with Mac?

Akbar Tahir,

You managed quite well to minimize the 'pattern' on the skin, but it is still very visible in eybrows, eyes, nose and mouth .... have you tried the FFT Filter? Attachment 3

Attachment 4 Eyes zoom-in

Rô,

.... you 'beat' me while I was writing my reply ... :pleased:

Hi Ro (and Flora),

1 - I am using PC (laptop actually right now, but Win).

2 - Yes, sorry, I haven't upgraded, so I forget there is CS2. I am using CS1. (Could that be the problem?)

3 - I did not find an old version to try and download. Only the 2 new versions, of which I downloaded the RGB one.

4 - Yes, I've downloaded it twice now, in case in corrupted while transferring.

5 - Yes, I can actually click on them, which gives me the error.

Sorry to be a pain.... I do thank you though for any help. :)

I don't know if this might help or not... I don't get an error in but I've attached a screenshot showing where the FFT files are saved on my system. WinXPSP2.

:confused:

Okay, I finally got it to work, after uninstalling and reinstalling for the upteenth time, but, it would not work on the image that I am trying to restore.

I was able to open it on a different image.

The one I'm trying to restore is RGB 8, no layers.. not really large file, only 89.1Mb.

Now that I have it working, sort of, any clues as to why it's not working on the one image that I need it to work with? *I consider it.. just my luck ;)*

Thanks!

I don't know if this might help or not... I don't get an error in but I've attached a screenshot showing where the FFT files are saved on my system. WinXPSP2.

Thanks.. yes, I had mine the same. Same OS too. Appreciate the try! :)

.. not really large file, only 89.1Mb.
That's not an 89MB jpeg I assume... how about pixel dimensions? Is any side larger than 3072 pixels? If that's the case, http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?p=112265#post112265 that might help - the only problem I ran into but I didn't get an error when the image was apparently larger than the filter likes, just no stars.

That's not an 89MB jpeg I assume... how about pixel dimensions? Is any side larger than 3072 pixels? If that's the case, http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?p=112265#post112265 that might help - the only problem I ran into but I didn't get an error when the image was apparently larger than the filter likes, just no stars.

:depressed Yes, actually it is a jpeg... but, it's 9639x3230.

Thanks for the link to the other thread, I'll go start reading.

skyarcher,

welcome to RetouchPRO.

your image is too large, as has already been pointed out. there are other plugins that do this as well. i think it's the polaroid dust and scratch removal program, that when used as a plugin, has a limit of about 1024 pixels on any one side. it might even be smaller. so, this isnt uncommon.

also, why would you need to be working on an 89 meg file as an 89 meg file? i know folks are always trying to get the best possible results and resolutions, but ostensibly you're going to print this out at some point and your print just is never going to print at that kind of resolution. inks just cant get it that fine, so why work on such a huge file as a huge file? you could easily cut this in half, or even more, and lose nothing in the print.

i find that about the largest you ever need, at least for home inkjet printing, is about 1024 x 1024 at roughly 200 dpi. this may vary a bit depending on colors and printing choices, but i've never been disappointed in the printing by these choices. now, if you're doing printing on commercial presses or something like that, then that may well be a different story and i'll shut up and go away because i have no idea there. but if only on a home printer, i think you could save yourself a lot of trouble and time due to processing slowness by cutting your file size down.

so, why the large file size?

craig

Hi Craig,

Because it is not my image that I am working on. This is the file that was given to me to try and do what I can to restore. I won't be printing, but sending it back as per instructions. What they do with it, I don't know. :)

Thank you though for seconding that it is too large for plugin.

sky,

ok. thanks :)

craig

Hi SkyArcher

Try this
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7210&page=1&pp=15

Image Analyser will handle larger file sizes than Alex Chirakov FFT. I don’t know what the maximum size is.

Ken

edit: cameraken posted while I was typing... try that one first it could be less work :)

my suggestion:

Cut up the file into pieces to process individually and then stitch back together if you want to keep the max resolution and use the free plugin. There's bound to be several ways to do it but basically you want to cut them into pieces 100 to 200 pixels smaller than 3072x3072. Adding a grey border helps avoid an artifact of the free fft plugin and I think when I was playing with it I used 200 pixels... so cut it up into pieces of 2872x2872 pixels and then save those pieces.

You end up with 3072 x 3072 files if you add a 200 pixel grey border, save the files, run FFT on each one, save them, then paste into your working project file. It's not impossible... and I'm not one to reduce the size my own files just so I can use a filter if I can find a way to avoid it :)

http://videosean.gotgeeks.com/i/PS/2872.atn <- I made a file that was 9639 wide x 3230 high. that action will put guides into a file that size at 2872x2872 and then it will copy the first (top, left) sector into a new file and add a 200 pixel grey border. If you want something that would do that. You can go by the guides to copy the rest into new documents - I didn't want to have an action that was going to make 6 new documents.

Use the FFT filter technique as decribed in the tutorials section.
The attached is the result of my second use of this filter.
Just a bit of blur touchup after application of the filter.

Looks good rrustic, glad to see you got the hang of it.

Rô

I am extremely new to retouching.
I started just scanning old b&w photos and putting them on disk so folks could view them on their TVs. Then I started to "fix" them up a bit, removing dust and scratches and such. I am now trying to add color. It is great fun!!!!!!.
I was given a pic of a Romanian woman when she was in her teens and it was really heavy with the texture of the paper. This sight has helped me immensely as I found the FFT technique here.
I am sure I will have tons of questions for the terrific people who post here.