HELP Trees and Stain

[nebgranny]

I am trying my hand at restoring this photo for a friend. Just cropped the part most in need of help.

Who would think trees would be so hard to do...cloneing just makes them look fuzzy. Also there is a big round stain . Can someone help with this?

Then could you post each step? Sometimes I do not know where a function is so if you could add that , it would make learning so much easier.

Thanks to anyone willing to help me learn . Neb
PS: If this is asking too much ..just let meknow!!

[RooB]

Maybe someone else can add to this (I can only go by what I see of the crop)-- the picture appears black and white, the stain is brown. Desaturate the photograph and the stain may all but vanish.

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Neb,

Since picture is B&W, selected blue channel (this had least staining or other marks) then converted it to Greyscale.

[nebgranny]

Thanks..how doesone desaturate and work with the blue channel? You both did wonders with it. Thanks Neb

[nebgranny]

Found desaturate thanks for the technique. Not a clue how you worked with the blue channel Gary. can you give some direstion on how to work with them please?
Neb

[Kraellin]

could i see a copy of the whole picture, please, neb?

Craig

[nebgranny]

Sure Craig:
It is a mess for sure! Looks like some little one got a hold of it and scribbled blue marker on it. Besides all the marks and folds. Here it is. Neb

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Neb,

Have sent you a PM to explain how I got the image I posted.

Sorry I wasn't online to clarify things.

If there's anything else you need to know, or the explanation is not clear to you in any way, post here and I'll try to clarify things.

Good luck with your picture, have fun.

Gary.

Had a quick play with the full picture. Selected Blue Channel as before. The Stain shows as a darkening of the picture, so did a loose selection round it, then copied and pasted to a new layer. Did a levels adj to even things out.

[Kraellin]

thanks neb, that does help.

are you using PS or PSP?

Craig

[nebgranny]

Hi Craig:
I can do either. Have both ..psp9 ad CS Thanks Neb

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Neb, as per your PM, here's a breakdown of what I did, and why.

Ok, as your image was B&W but in (RGB), and the stain was coloured, there was a good chance that one of the channels would be found to have less damage than the others. (It's almost always worth looking at the channels seperately).

In this case the blue channel seemed to show least damage, so I selected it, then converted image to Greyscale, using Image>Mode>Greyscale. When prompted I allowed it to discard the other channels.

You now have a B&W image in Greyscale mode. However, you do not have access to all Photoshop tools in Greyscale, so it is better to convert back to RGB mode. So Image>Mode>RGB Colour and we now are back to a B&W image in RGB mode, but this time without the coloured stain.

When the whole image was viewed, the stain could be seen now as a darker grey area, so it's a relatively simple task to select this area and perform a levels adj to lighten it up to match its surroundings.

My prefered technique is to select it using Quick Mask, and copy it to a new layer, before applying levels to the new layer. This allows you to do a final matching by adjusting the layer opacity on the new layer.

Hope this describes thing clearly enough for you, anything needs clarifying please ask.

Gary.

[Kraellin]

thanks neb.

as stated many times on these forums, there is almost always more than one way to do things in psp or ps. i tried both the cropped image and the full one with this technique:

duplicate layer.
new hue/sat/light adjustment layer. lower saturation to remove color stains. raise lightness. use whatever numbers you like to suit your tastes. i went about minus 80 on sat and plus 20 on light.

new curves adjustment layer. lowered the high whites and added some contrast throughout.

new contrast/light adjustment layer. this may not be necessary, depending on previous adjustment layers, but i added it and used about a 0 light/+20 contrast.

done.

those steps shld word regardless of whether you use psp or ps. the desaturation step shld remove some of the spots on this image also and make the rest of the cleanup easier. watch the very bright whites and the very dark darks when using the curves layer. you want to take down the top whites just a bit and brighten up the bottom darks. the gent on the left in particular is fairly dark after the desaturation and you want to brighten him up a bit. use the mid tones to raise the contrast a bit.

if you brighten the image up quite a bit with hue/sat/light, then the last step of contrast/light will be necessary to add back some contrast to get rid of the 'haze'.

i'm not posting attachments this time. they are very similar to gary's and would just be redundant in this case.

if you're so inclined, once you've done the clean up you might want to look at colorizing this image.

best of luck

Craig

[Cassidy]

Being a brown patch, using the wand did a pretty decent job, selecting the brown area and then increasing it slightly with "Shift" and then increasing the level of the brightness on the selected area, before returning to greyscale, gave me similar results to others.

[nebgranny]

Thanks Gary, Craigand Cassidy. I have learned more from this picture and your posts than ever, except a coloring and mask techniques from flora and viki. This is a great learning experience for me. Now one more step.How about the face on the man with the hat? It looks so dark and like he has makeup on. Can you suggest a function for it? Cassidy tried your step but the magnetic lasso tool did not make a really good selection. any suggestions ?? Neb

[CJ Swartz]

Neb,

I don't have Photoshop CS, (I still have Version 7) but I believe that the Shadow/Highlights adjustment might help -- here is a RetouchPro tutorial on the new PShop feature:

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=104


For those of us without the newer versions of PShop, using a Contrast Mask will help in this situation. Basically, you make a duplicate layer of your subject layer, you desaturate this layer and name this new layer Contrast Mask, and invert the Contrast Mask layer (Control-I). Everything that was dark in the original photograph is now light, and everything that was light is now dark-- the light areas over the shadows in the mens faces will help to reduce those shadows after taking the next two steps. Change the layer blending mode to Overlay, then use Gaussian blur to adjust the effect -- look at their faces to see when they lighten a bit. The eyes are very dark and there is no eye detail (that I can see) to be saved in this image, but in a better photo you could bring back some of the detail -- showing the whites versus the iris/pupils. You can adjust the layer opacity of the Contrast Mask and apply adjustment layers (Levels, Curves, etc.) to improve the effect.

An excellent tutorial on Contrast Masking is available at the Luminous Landscape website --
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu..._masking.shtml

Added an image of an eye with/without a contrast mask to show reduction of shadow in the area -- it leaves a hue problem, (blotchy red under eye) but that is another step...