Critique and suggestions on a Polaroid

[bart_hickman]

I friend brought me a polaroid he would like fixed up. Is has scratches and fingerprints, but the worse problem is simply that it's a polaroid and thus very blurry. I attached a crop from the original (he only cares about their heads and upper bodies) and what I did to try to clean it up.

My cleanup consists of auto color and levels, curve boost to shadows (brightens their faces without blowing the wall), color balance, USM radius ~60 to clear it up, followed by a couple of passes of USM for sharpening, healing to remove scratches, Ro's bandstop face-smoothing method, and a vignette. As if that all wasn't enough, I ran it through PSP nosie reduction AND Picture Cooler which simply sharpens the high-contrast edges.

I would appreciate your learned analysis and suggestions.

Bart

[mistermonday]

Hi Bart,
I chose a route which favored a less processed look. I began by duplicating the image and applying the Red Channel of the backgroung layer to the duplicate layer resulting in a grayscale layer. I sharpened that layer and cleaned it up a it (noise reduction, clone tool).Then changed its blend mode to Luminosity. There did a curve adjustment to pull up the mid tones and boosted the saturation. Finally used the sharpen tool to bring back some of the detail in the faces. The remaining scratches still need to be cleaned up but it is a little better than the original.
Regards, Murray

[bart_hickman]

Hi Murray,

Thanks. I agree--mine looks too processed. I think I'll back off and hit it more conservatively.

Bart

[philbach]

I took a different path and switched to a Lab Mode. Increased the lightness, and the saturation. I also used Shadow Highlights. Back to RGB and Neat Image and various descratching filters.

[bart_hickman]

I finally sat down last night to look at what you did and using the red channel was an excellent idea--it's nice and quiet.

Bart

[Cameraken]

Hi Bart

Not an easy one.
I extracted the luminosity then sharpened it and healed the faces

When the luminosity looked ok I put back the colour
Then several more layers to colour, clone etc.

Ken

[bart_hickman]

Thanks Ken!

I tried printing some of these and I'm finding that images that appear over-processed on the computer screen come out looking more natural on paper--probably because the paper prints are small (and for this particular job, they won't be printed as large as they show up on my monitor.) I found it interesting--I should probably go learn more about color management to minimize surprises like this.

Bart

[philbach]

Bart another possibility is your computer monitor has not been calibrated.

[bart_hickman]

Hi Phil,

I thought of that and checked--it's still calibrated.

The color of the pictures matches the printer pretty well, it's just that the relative smallness and un-brightness of a printed picture seems to not draw my attention to the artifacts as easily. The largest I can even print anything is 8x11, which is still a lot smaller than my monitor. The guy I'm doing this for will only want it at 4x6 at the most.

I also imagine if I used a standard studio light to shine on the photos, they might look worse.

Thanks,
Bart

[Syd]

Hi Bart

Like Murray I favor the less processed look. I deleted all but the red channel which I sharpened with the unsharp mask. My document was then in Multichannel mode and I converted it back to RGB (first going to Grayscale and then RGB - because you can't go Multichannel to RGB). I then took a snapshot of the document and created a new document from that. Then I went back to the original document (as I had opened it) and adjusted the color using levels and selective color (toned down the black in the neutrals a bit). When the color was to my liking I flattened it and dragged a copy over to my new document I had created from the red channel and changed the blend mode to color. I flattened those two layers again, made a copy and did some healing and cloning. I tried putting it through noise filters but they only softened the hair too much and it looked false somehow. Eventually I just settled for two passes of the despeckle filter.

Regards Syd

[Kraellin]

syd,

welcome to RP.

i'd take yours one step further and do just a bit of noise reduction. not much, just a bit.

i took a shot at this also. quite a stinker. i found myself adding just about every adjustment layer possible. i didnt end up using all of them, but quite a few. what i really found helped most was a histogram adjustment filter. i also did noise reduction with psp's digital camera noise removal and color balance with smart select to get the white settings and color balance better after all the adjustment layers.

i cleaned up scratches with scratch removal and push. i also did some individual sharpening on things like the eyes. those could still use some hand work, though.

tricky image overall.

craig

[Kraellin]

i liked syd's better than mine, so i ran a bit of the noise reduction on it that i wanted and did a little hand work on the eyes.

craig