Fix badly aged and damaged photo

[Nacoya]

Hi,

1st post so please bear with me...

Using : PS CS

A friend has scanned the attached photo and resized it for the moment. He has had it for years (sadly he no longer has the dogs) and wishes to 'restore' it as best he can (or should i say i can).
Can anyone help ?
I don't mean do it (although that would be ok) but to point me in the right direction to do it myself. I will of course have the full sized image but if we can work on this smaller image then i can find out how best to tackle it.
I'm ok with PS as i use it frequently in web design etc, but i have never attempted anything like this restoration so i don't know where to start (or finish for that matter )..

Thanks for any help ,

cheers,

nacoya

[Caitlin]

Really curious to know how that discolouration has occured. Do you know how it was stored/displayed? The fading is the opposite to what I would expect as I would expect it to fade to magenta exposed to the air/light - which would be in the centre of the picture if in an oval frame!

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Nakoya,

Had a quick go with your image. Selected the eliptical area, feathered selection, then adjusted colour using levels. Select inverse, then adjusted remaining area.
(It was'nt possible to get a good match adjusting just one area.)

Cloned along join area to hide it.

Lastly did a little hand colouring on discoloured areas, and adjusted lighting a little with curves.

Hope this helps.

[Flora]

Hi Nacoya,

Welcome to RP!

I started my restoration as Gary did: elliptical selection and strong feathering (10 pixels) ... then I tried a different (and much longer ... ) procedure .... including 'Color Balance' and Selective Colors' Adjustment Layers.

I used the 'Curves' to remove the very strong cyan cast and to balance lights and shadows...

Please, let me know if you'd like a detailed description of the steps I took ...

Gary,

great job in removing the 'fading' .... on my monitor, though, the contrast in your picture seems very strong and there's still a light cyan cast .... Since I'm having problems with the 'blasted' calibration thing .... I'd really like to know if it's just my monitor.... Thanks in advance ....

[Nacoya]

That is brilliant m8, You made it look/sound so easy.
I'm going to try and replicate what you have achieved to be confident i can do it then i'll give the actual pic a go.
I'll be in touch.

thanks again for your prompt reply..

cheers,

nacoya

Added:

hi flora,

just spotted your post while i was writing this..again i have to say results are fantastic.
If you can post/PM me the details then that would be brill as any/all help is appreciated. Then armed with all this help and info i can tackle the bigger picture and post back with how i get on...

cheers,

nacoya

[Caitlin]

I think you are right about the colours Flora, the colour caste looks more accurate in your version to me. Then again the last thing my little laptop is is colour calibrated!! *lol*

[Gary Richardson]

hi Flora, you're absolutely right about the contrast, I was in a bit of a rush to get out this morning, so I did a bit of a rush (sub-standard) job. Contrast is poor, colour balance needs adjustment, and some of the cloning is diabolical.

Hopefully I've got a bit of spare time now, so I'll play around with it some more.

[Gary Richardson]

Sorry to come back to this so late. Had a few issues with my firewall that needed resolving.

Have addresssed contrast issue by lightening around the two dogs (where I thought I'd lost fur detail) by copying and pasting from original.

Then colour corrected whole image, and locally adjusted dogs.

Lastly cloned over some of the very obvious earlier clone marks.

[realaqu]

Gary

Well done

[Nacoya]

Thanks gary ,

and everyone brill job and i've learnt a lot. Now i need to convert my attempts, which consisted mainly a lot of trial and error into actually understanding what i'm doing and why.
Now i have a confession to make..it seems only fair as this is my first post and you guys have gone too much trouble.
My mate(lets name and shame) Ray, was going to send me the larger scanned picture except....he has found the negative .... so i thought it only fair to kick him around the room a few times and then put the scanned negative image in this post to show you..
I wonder now we can see the actual pic for the first time how close we could get to it...I've obviously resized it...

cheers,

nacoya

[Gary Richardson]

Happy Ray found his negative. Obviously the restored job is a long way short of the quality of the image taken from it, but it was fun having a go.

[Gary Richardson]

This is about as close as I can get to the negative, without spending a lot more time than I've got available. Just can't get the shadow detail, as it's not in the original stained version.

I just did a bit of hand colouring on this.

[Flora]

Nacoya,

...all is well what ends well .... Glad your friend found the negative and can get his perfect picture back!!!

Gary,

Originally Posted by Gary Richardson

This is about as close as I can get to the negative,

...any closer and you'd have the original!!! Terrific job!!!!

[Gary Richardson]

Thanks very much for your kind comments Flora. There's still a few discrepancies in the vegetation behind the dogs, but it would take more time than I have available at the moment to resolve them, and as the negative is available, I probably won't bother.

[deadants]

Seeing the great results you got with the dog photo could the same technique work on this photo. It has a great big green looking stain at the bottom and stains all over the place. They are really strong in the red channel. As there are hundreds of these dots I really would love a way to remove them un-masse if possible. The only way I can think of is to spot mark them with a quick mask then invert the mask and do a blur and this is probably the wrong track to take but I’m open to ideas

[Gary Richardson]

Hi, had a quick play with your image, this is by no means a finished job, but an indicator of how I'd go about the problem.

For the spot problem, I'd select the red channel, and apply Polaroid Dust and Scratches Filter direct to the channel. I've found this does a better job than PS's native filter. This hasn't removed all the spots, as you would probably lose skin texture using harsher settings. The remaining blemishes I'd probably clone out.

For the stained area, I first did a selection of the stained area using quick mask.
I copied and pasted to a new layer, then applied a levels adj layer, linked to this layer, to adjust colour and brightness/contrast. You coluld use just the Levels layer, and mask it, but I prefer the extra layer as it allws me to adjust layer opacity for extra control.
Then I created a colour layer and painted over any areas I wasn't happy with colourwise.
Lastly created new clone layer to clone out minor blemishes and join problems.

The whole image now needs correcting for colour and lighting, but I've not done that.

Hope this helps a little.

[deadants]

Thanks Gary, I have printed out your instructions and will give it a fly tommorrow. This forum is is great. I posted two questions today and had answers within an hour.

deadants

[Gary Richardson]

I've modified my post a little, I'd posted the wrong image for the stain correction,(one I'd done slightly differently, and the end results were'nt quite right).

But the instructions were as needed to achieve the picture I've now posted.

[deadants]

Thanks Gary, The stains are on the blue channel. My mistake. Note your correction.

deadants

[philbach]

Well since the discoloration on the right photo is limited. I copied the lady's photo to a new layer and used color as the blending mode to preserve the luminosity. I then just cloned the proper colors in.

For the left side where the spots are I started by copying the layer to a new layer and used lighten as a blending mode. Next I moved the copied layer up and to the right until the spots disappeared. This blurs the picture. I then applied a layer mask masking out the entire layer and then painted the mask with white to remove the spots.

I then used the healing brush and later neat image.

[Gary Richardson]

Nice one Phil, an elegant solution, and great results.

[Flora]

deadants, Gary, Phil,

great jobs!!!

I'm posting mine only because I used another way ....

For the spots: PS Dust&Scratches:

• Select the damaged channel Ctrl+A
• Ctrl+C copy it,
• Back to the layers, Ctrl+V paste as top layer ...
• Ctrl+J duplicate it
• Run the D&S Filter on the duplicate and add a Hide All Layer mask...
• Working on the mask, with a soft white brush paint over the spots to correct/remove them ....

Like Gary said, the important is to keep the texture to prevent the unnatural 'plastic' look, so, tweak the D&S settings .... increase the Radius until the spots have disappeared .... (the details of your picture will look blurred beyond recognition) .... then, increase the treshold until you get your texture back but not the spots .... For this picture I used:
11 pixels Radius
15 Pixels Treshold
and, as you can see, the spots are gone, but the texture is still there ....

For the discoloration, like Phil says, being it very limited, I just created a new blank layer (blending=Color) and, sampling from surrounding areas, I just painted on the discolorations with a soft brush (Opacity 40-60%)

[Kraellin]

here's a simple technique in paint shop pro. use the 'retouch' tool, which includes things like 'smudge', 'push', 'dodge' and so on, and pick the 'saturation down' mode. simply brush over all her dress area that is stained. nicely, this brings the color to a level very closely matching the color of her dress. for her neck area, i'd simply use a medium opacity clone and work it to a natural look. then, using clone also, take out the whitish areas dividing the old stain mark and no stain mark. simple. touch up any other areas as needed.

K.