Image Help - - Old newspaper Photo

lostinps · #1 04-10-2006, 01:47 PM

I'm trying to restore this newspaper photo . I'ts of poor quality and poor resulution. Any idea's of the best way to improve the image, and add some colour tone? I would like to remove the back ground, improve the detail.

mistermonday · #2 04-10-2006, 02:02 PM

Lostinps, welcome to RP! Without seeing the image it's really hard to comment. Can you attach a copy here?
Regards, Murray

lostinps · #3 04-10-2006, 02:32 PM

Followed all the instruction about attaching image. I'ii try again. My fault image size 512kb

mistermonday · #4 04-10-2006, 08:56 PM

Lost,
The scan seems very poor and the image is low res with a lot of pixelation. If you can get a cleaner scan, I would start by selecting the green channel and converting the image to B&W. A quick way to do so would be Image>Apply Image and select the Green channel from the pull down menu. I would then duplicate the image. On one image I would duplicate the backgroung layer and change the blend mode to Multiply. On the second image I would duplicate the background and change the blend mode to screen. Then paste a flattened copy of the screened image on top of the Multiplied image, add a layer mask (Hide All). Then with a white brush set to about 10-20% opacity, would paint over the faces and other areas which should be lighter.

The background is in pretty bad shape (including the sky). You should be able to select out the team and past them onto a completely new bkgnd. You can colorize the image or paint in by hand. Or just smooth out the noisy areas and leave in B&W.

Unless you can get a better scan, it will be tough to improve the eyes which seem to be almost black and without detail.

Good luck w/ the restoration.
Regards, Murray

lostinps · #5 04-11-2006, 02:30 PM

Thanks Murray,
I'll give it a try. Problem is that it is a v. poor foto. I'ts from a cira 75 newspaper, I'll give it a try and see. I was thinking of using extract filter and then play with the result, clone etc. Or would you mask and then attempt to impr.
Dave

mistermonday · #6 04-11-2006, 08:11 PM

Using the best scan that you can get, preferably 1200 dpi, I would make all the corrections that you can on the entire image, focusing on getting the people as best you can. When you are done, then I would cut out the background. If you extract the people first, any changes that you subsequently make will tend to manify any residual background edges and artifacts which were not removed by the extraction.
Regards, Murray