Help with noise in pic from 1908

[smiley guy]

Just trying to restore my grandmother... that's weird. She's still alive, by the way, but she did give me this pic of her sitting on her grandfather's lap with her mother sitting in front of them. So, that's my great-great-grandfather, my great grandmother and my grandmother in the photo.

Anyway, I'm having trouble with the noise/grain in the photo. The original was embedded or mounted in very thick glass and scanned from that original while in the glass. I seem to be having troubles with the bottom right corner of the photo, my great-great-grandfather's forehead and face, and my great grandmother. Too much grain. The original is roughly 2"x3.5".

I have attached the original scan and the restoration to this point in time. I am using layers in PS with masks for background and each individual in the photo.

Any help is appreciated.

[RooB]

I pushed the photo through NeatImage, and on default settings it was able to do a good job of noise reduction-- though, I probably could have obtained a sharper image if I had turned on the sharpening settings. They have a free demo, http://www.neatimage.com

I wonder if I should work for those guys in advertising? :P

[adong]

RooB, that's a very nice rendition. Please share with us how you did it.


adong

[DaveS]

Hi Smiley,
To bring your Grandmother back a little I did a levels adjustment layer set to multiply and clicked ok, then on the mask I just painted everything out apart from your Grandmother. I then duplicated the layer adjustment layer and did the same for her sleeve. It still needs to be fine tuned but it might be of some help to you.

Dave

[Cassidy]

Taking this from the point of your restoration, I ran a light highpass filter over a duplicate, and placed it in overlay mode (to enhance/pick up the details) and then ran a small smart blur on a new duplicate of the original layer and erased all the details I did not want smoothed. I then did a simple burn on the mother's face and sleeve to bring out the details a little better.

[Kraellin]

this doesnt help your noise problem, but everyone has missed one thing here. there is more data in that lower right hand corner that could be brought out. i'm attaching just the red channel from the original picture to show this.

as for the noise, Neat Image shld work, but i think i'd prefer to do some hand work on this one... clone, push, smudge would be my first choices. the lighten/darken brush might also help, as well as the 'change to target' brush.

Craig