Image Help - - Suggestions for cleaning up old photo...

glipski · #1 09-13-2005, 05:36 AM

Hi all,
New here and also to PS, but I'm learning everyday. I've got a huge scan from a small snapshot of my dad. It was the last picture taken of him before he passed away, and I'd like to clean it up and make a larger print out of it. The larger part I can handle, however, the cleanup is where I fall short. I appreciate any advice I can get on this, since I can't seem to figure out where to even start on it. Thanks everyone.

DaveS · #2 09-13-2005, 07:16 AM

Hi glipski
welcome to RTP where I'm sure you will find all the help you need. Had a go at cleaning up the image, firstly I ran it through Neat Image, which is a noise reduction program. I then opened it in PS and did a levels adjustment using some of the rock in the bg as a neutral grey sample. I then ran a high pass filter over it to sharpen the image a little and put a layer mask on the filter and softened the sharpening on the background as it became very blocky. Lastly I added a 50% grey layer set to overlay and using black and white on that layer at about 10%, dodged and burnt some of the detail bak into the rock your dad is sitting on and some of his features just to make him stand out a bit more. There is still quite a bit of healing to do on some of the artifacts that have been created. Hopefully this has been of some help.

Dave

Cassidy · #3 09-13-2005, 08:31 AM

To achieve this end I copied I firstly used a curves adjustment and then used a highpass filter in overlay mode. I then merged the highpass and colour corrected copy and created a new duplicate layer from that. On that layer I used a very very small gaussian blur and then erased details such as the eyes, nose etc from the blur layer.

leuallen · #4 09-13-2005, 01:39 PM

My try

Larry

Kraellin · #5 09-13-2005, 09:52 PM

here's mine.

Craig

Cassidy · #6 09-14-2005, 03:33 AM

Glipski, very flattered and for your further information as follows:-

1. Curves Adjustment: Using only the pickers (as circled in the pic and being from left to right, black point, grey point and white point) Using the black picker selected the darkest check on the shirt, using the grey picker, the dark area of water immediately after the green shadow of the tree on the water, and with the white picker, the whitest check on the shirt.

2. Highpass Filter. I duplicated the layer I had done the curves adjustment on and then went up to filter->Other->Highpass (just to define the edges) and then on the layers strip I changed the blending mode to overlay.

3. I removed the visibility from the original layer and then chose merge visible to give me a sharper and colour corrected image.

4. I duplicated the merged layer and then ran a low gaussian blur on the picture (just to even/muddy the detail a little and dropped the opacity to 90%.

5. On my blurred layer I then used the eraser tool to erase areas of the picture where I wanted maximum detail. I have provided a pic of the layer on it's own after blurring and erasing for reference.

glipski · #7 09-14-2005, 12:06 PM

Thanks everyone for your help so far...all of the submissions look great. I'm having a tough time working it out on the large size file I have, but I'll keep plugging away. I've got some great ideas here, and thanks to Cass for her "mini-tutorial" for me. I'm slow to catch on,a nd it really helped me.

Bujo · #8 09-14-2005, 08:34 PM

Mostly done in curves, but a bit of color adj. pulling out some red, level adj. to make it a bit brighter.

glipski · #9 09-14-2005, 09:33 PM

Okay, how can I smooth out the artifacting in the skin, but still maintain some sense of detail?

Cassidy · #10 09-15-2005, 09:39 AM

Try duplicating the final layer, applying filter->blur->guassian blur and just a low blur, just enough to smooth, but not create large halos, then using an eraser on the blurred layer, (probably at around 25%), erase areas where the eyes/nose are and the edges that define the outline of the image and any other important feature/s