where to start :(

[bart_hickman]

Originally Posted by Cameraken

Bart.
That’s a great bit of lateral thinking.
But if you have the picture to scan the back then you may as well scan it in right. Even if your idea worked the problem is that the picture would still be distorted as Roger has already mentioned.

You're right, of course. When I posted this idea, the excellent idea of rescanning the photo at 0, 90, 180, 270 degrees hadn't clicked yet. That's obviously the best way to go--just taking the mean of the four scans should get rid of the shadows leaving "only" the scratches.

Bart

[carpman]

Thanks for all your replies, lot of ideas many i will have to try and convert to gimp method.

Will do some rescans this evening, will do 4 x90 degrees and one of the back.

All the work you have shown can be done leaves me lot to live up

I will try and rise to the challenge.


I have attached an image that was 2 scans at 180 degrees, these were:

Blended 50%
flattened
adjusted levels and curves
duplicated layer
top layer was destraturated,inverted then overlay blended 50%
convert greyscale
deinterlaced
despeckled

Also second third are 2 scans at 180 degrees


Still got to get my head around using channels


Also any advice on settings when doing actual scan itself?

many thanks.

[Racc Iria]

Carpman...

I'm curious why you deinterlaced the image. Deinterlacing deletes every other line of pixels and then reinterpolates that data from whats left. In essence you're destroying half of the precious little detail you have in the image to work with.

Deinterlacing is really only necessary when the source of the image is from an interlaced medium, such as television and the field lines are obvious. Scanning the image will not result in an interlaced image. There should be no need to deinterlace.

--Racc

[carpman]

Originally Posted by Racc Iria

Carpman...

I'm curious why you deinterlaced the image. Deinterlacing deletes every other line of pixels and then reinterpolates that data from whats left. In essence you're destroying half of the precious little detail you have in the image to work with.

Deinterlacing is really only necessary when the source of the image is from an interlaced medium, such as television and the field lines are obvious. Scanning the image will not result in an interlaced image. There should be no need to deinterlace.

--Racc

opps learn something new every day

[Nanls]

This trick works with photos that are black and white of have little color range. Take the photo and duplicate it. Move the bottom layer over and down a couple of pixels, and with the eraser set at maybe 50% oppacity,start to erase the hard lines and the photo below will show through to fix the scratches. Then with a n ew layer and with the "use all layers " clicked on, use the clone tool to fill in more... If you don't like a place simply erase it on the top layer... I just did a spot (and didn't finish it due to time restaints). But if you give it some time it could come out nicely.

~Nancy~
__________________________
www.fixthepixs.com

[carpman]

Hello, ok i tried the 4 scan trick but it seems to have more cracks than when i did it with 2 scans, tried different placement for each layer but still no better.


All have done with this scan crop and put each scan into own layer in one image convert to greyscale.

[Vikki]

Can you post the individual images?

[twinkissed]

Ok I had to work on this a little more tonight. I used the heal brush along with hand painting and smudging. I did a slight guassian blur mask as well. Not quite finished but getting there I think. I know you didn't ask me to "do" it but I've enjoyed working on it so I hope you don't mind.

[carpman]

No i don't mind as it give me ideas, plus if you really wanted to work on i could give you access to original scanned images.

[carpman]

Originally Posted by Vikki

Can you post the individual images?

Hello, ok here are the latest scanned images in compressed tiff and jpg format, but instead of attaching them you can find original scanned images in link below.


These are as scanned but i did play with RGB levels when doing scan, not sure if this was good idea will try at default later.

What i want to do is get best base image to start with before trying out restoration techniques outline in this thread.

The tiffs are about 15mb each jpg 1mb but have also created a zip files of them, if these are too big let me know.

Large scanned images


Note the black mark on image is not beauty mark pr mole

[carpman]

looking at the original and the scanned image and work others have done the nose has more detail on one side than the other, would it be a good idea to sample good side and then use this via flipping to recreate other side of nose?

[carpman]

Hello, i downloaded the linux version of Vuescan to try scans again, it has more options and one which may help is when scanning as black&white is which colour to use as grey, as blue channel seems to have most detail i choose blue.

Trouble is my scanner is attached to a box which is running cutting edge linux compiler and filesystem (reiser4) which is causing problems with vuescan so can't actually get any scans yet

[bart_hickman]

It looks like you're having a hard time getting to two images aligned (I see some ghosting). I'd recommend adding some sharp fiducial marks to the scan. Ie., securely attach the photo to some backing (white piece of paper), then put four dots (one near each corner of the photo) on the backing which will show up in the scan. Then you can align the dots when you combine the scans--you can even temporarily use a "difference" blend mode to help with the alignment.

Bart

[carpman]

Back again ok scanned image again 4x90 degrees, this time with vuescan which allow me more options, one of which was 3 passes.

The colour of scan is now more like the original photo and lot less yellow then xsane scan.

I took advice on alinement so there should be no more ghosting, the resulting merged image looks better but lighter, when i try playing with levels i can get more detail (darker) but cracks show up more, had slight improvement by using Gimp plugin 'sharpen (seperate lights and shadows)'

Question, how best to get more detail with out darkening cracks? or should i try touching up cracks with clone tool and then playing with levels?


many thanks

I have attached first untouched scan, second ismerged with above filter.

[Kraellin]

carpman,

there comes a point where you can only do so much with a certain tool or a certain process. i think you've hit that point with the scanning techniques. in fact, i think you hit it earlier than your last attempt. you're not going to completely fix this image with just scanning tricks. the point of the scanning is to get the best image possible so that you can begin to actually fix the image. you've gotten some excellent help on this and i applaud those that got you here. now, it's time to move on and actually fix the image.

i'd start with one of those you have on your links page, the ftp page. i think it was 0012a.tiff that i loaded up. it looks like it would be a workable image. it's very sepia colored. i used the Fast Fix plugin to desaturate it quite a bit first. after this, it's clone time. time to remove the scratches and tear marks.... and you've got a lot of them. there's just no other way around it, so, roll up your sleeves, get out your clone tool and eraser and start

i actually started on the background with the eraser. there's nothing in the BG worth saving so i just erased it. we can put something back later.

after that, it's clone time. start on something easy. if you're not familiar with the clone tool, then practice on a duplicate image. try different settings and approaches till you're comfortable with the process. cloning is an art. it can take some time to perfect, but you can do incredible things with it.

the Gimp's clone is not the best, but it does work. practice, practice, practice!

i'm following this thread and working on your image also, so i'll jump in from time to time and we can compare results

good luck!

Craig