Need help with quality in irregular prints

[linoleum]

Hey everyone, just got a roll of film developed and many photos have really ugly quality, and I have no idea where to even begin to fix it. I've tried many things but it just keeps making it look worse. The quality is much different on one part of the photo than the other. And if anyone has the solution to fixing it, could you explain how it was done? It would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[CJ Swartz]

Look at the negatives -- do they show the same irregularities? I'd show the prints to the lab and check whether there was an error during development. Perhaps it's caused by lens flare, but if it's a development error, the lab should re-do it if the negatives aren't damaged.

[linoleum]

Thanks for your response. Unfortunately, I just checked the negatives and they have the same irregularities as the actual photos. I'm thinking something was just wrong with my film...it was a year old and I didn't leave it refrigerated as long as I should have, or perhaps it went through one too many x-ray machines at airports, I'm not sure.

Well do you think there's anyway to make it look a little nicer through one of the graphics programs? Particularly making the quality of the strange triangle area at the bottom of the photo to match the quality of the rest of the photo? Thanks.

[Gary Richardson]

hi Lino,

Haven't tried to fix all the issues in your picture, only the triangular area.

Did rough selection round darker area, copy and paste to new layer.
Adjusted using curves to get match. (To do this, use sample tool to get reading of sky just outside selected area, and sample just inside. Use curves on individual R,G and B channels to match colour numbers).

New layer and clone along joint line with a soft clone brush to hide it.

[Cameraken]

This picture interests me because it has quite a common problem.

I look at pictures like this and think “layer mask & Gradient” the trouble is I don’t know how to do this and finish up using the clone tool set to darken and lighten.

I look at the sky especially and think this could be made into a mask

I’ve spent a long time looking for a tutorial on faded stains and found nothing. Can anyone point me to how this should be done ‘Properly’?

Ken

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Ken,

Not quite sure what you're looking for here, but I took your version of the picture, and applied a levels adj layer, adjusted roughly to lighten dark vertical band, then applied a graduated mask, re-adjusted levels, finally painted on mask using soft black brush set to 20% to mask area just to left of band.

Hope this helps, any questions I'll be glad to answer.

Haven't tried to correct sea problems here, I'd probably do a rough selection round that, feather it, then adj levels or curves (whichever gave best results).

[Flora]

Hi linoleum,

Welcome to RP!

Quite a bit of uneven fading and discolorations in this picture!!!

I had a go ... I used the Curves on the fadings, Levels applied to the individual channels to restore the colours, Hue&Saturation and Selective colors for the discolorations ....

Ken,

I haven't found a 'good-for-all' method which can deal with faded stains, stains, fading or discolorations .... Generally speaking, I approach these problems as Gary said ... a rough selection first, but then it could be Curves, Levels, Hue&Saturation, Selective Colors, Brightness/Contrast, Apply Image .... you name it ....

[Cameraken]

My thoughts were to use something like Floras Channel Mask Tutorial Steps 1 and 2.
http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=65
Then instead of selecting just the highlights in step 3 to select the whole picture and add a layer mask to select maybe the whole sky, as in enclosed sample. (masked very quickly)

I thought that this could be used somehow to repair the sky. But it looks like I was wrong.

Ken

[Gary Richardson]

Interesting idea Ken, can't see any reason why it shouldn't work in principle, worth experimenting with in any case.

[Flora]

Ken,

a 'right' Channel Mask isn't very easy to achieve in this case as it works mostly with strong contrasts and isolates shadows/highlights ... all of it nearly non-existent in this image ...

What I tried, after reading your post, is a middle-tones mask ... which worked better than a 'plain' Channel Mask .... But since here we have very uneven light/dark and colour fadings a mask should be created for each individual problem area ... That's why, in my opinion, quick masking is much faster and just as efficient for this picture.

Attachment 1 > Mid-Tones Mask
Attachment 2 > Corrected/Refined and Blurred Mid-Tones Mask
Attachment 3 > B&A Curves correction with Mid-Tones Mask (no further mask refining was applied).

[Cameraken]

Thank You Flora for taking the time to do that (I like your arrows)

I suppose I had already worked this out for myself. My mask worked perfectly at the point where the whole picture turned grey. This gets rid of the fading but I don’t think Linoleum would be very happy with a grey rectangle instead of his picture.

One thing this mask does do is highlight the areas that do need attention.

So quick masking is the way to do this. Well at least I learned something even if it was the hard/long way.


Thanks Flora and Gary.


Ken

[Kraellin]

i havent tried this myself on this image, but you might treat all that manilla coloring as noise and run neat image on the picture, especially if you have neat image as a plugin and can mask and select certain areas out for treatment.

Craig

[linoleum]

Thanks for the responses everyone. Some of you have come up with some incredible stuff, better than anything I could dream of. I know it's something relatively difficult to correct, so thanks for putting in the time to try.