Help with old portrait

[Ezra]

Hi all,

I'm new here so bear with me if there are any technical difficulties...

I recently found a wonderful old photo of my father tucked into the back of an old desk-caddy sort of thing. The photo appears to be a 4x5 polaroid from his days working at an NYC bookstore and portrait studio. The photo was folded in half and has severe fading and blotching issues.
I've gone as far as spotting and rebuilding the details of his face and hair, and running levels and curves on the whole scan, but beyond the basics I don't know where to begin.

The areas that appear blue in the scan are actually parts of the image that have become sort of silvery and reflective, I managed to bring those splotches down simply by desaturating the scan. The darkest blacks in the image have also become slightly silvery as if it was solarized.
On top of all of that, there are parts of the surounding border of faces that are so damaged that I have no idea how to bring them back, and I'm trying to avoid cropping it down as I really like the image as it is.

Any suggestions as to where I should begin, or some early global fixes that would ease the work load, would be very much appreciated.

-Ezra

[cainam]

As you mentioned: this is a wonderful photo!...and I would leave it as it is (the way you posted it).
Just print it that way.

A lot of photographers/artists would be happy if they could create images in such a style.

Besides, retouching it would be very hard to do, and would take a lot of time.

That's my opinion.


Mark

[Ezra]

Thanks Mark,

Indeed the damage to the image does have a charm all of its own, but I really want to find a way to get this photo retouched, as I thought I might use it on my website as a before and after retouching example.

I appreciate any help or ideas,

Thanks again,
Ezra

[Daviskw]

Hi Ezra

I gave retouching a try... I think with work you can get it somewhat better if not perfect. I could have gotten it closer if I could just remember the mans name in the upper left side. I'll bet you could get that same picture off the net with a little searching... I know he starred in a spy flick on TV... oh well for fun I put someone else there.


Hey think I found him not sure Robert Vaughn


Butch

[Mary Heinz]

Hi, that "edition" is marvelous. I'd love to learn how you did that and
what you used..

[Ezra]

Very nice Butch,

I can see some of what you did there (the Napoleon pic, the concert poster copy/paste), but how did you manage to clean all of the garbage (splotches, etc) out of it in what seems to be a fairly short amount of time?
By the way, nice hand-coloring work!

Also, thanks for the tip on the guy on the upper left, I'll look around for that same poster. I'm still looking for a copy of that picture on the right, I've been told that it's Jack Kerouac but I still haven't found that specific image.

Thanks again for the Help,
Ezra

[Daviskw]

Hi Ezra

I went thru the channels and copied and pasted areas of less damage. The color in the picture is damaged and shifted in areas so my target was tone not color.

Then mostly working on luminosity I painted or cloned the highly damaged areas of splotches to even them out and added shading and noise back where I flattened the tone too much. I have no artistic skills so I try to keep as much existing texture as possible. In some areas I would use layers set to lighten or darken and paint almost a pixel at a time zooming back out to check progress. As you can tell I did not do a lot of that but you could in a labor of love.

Once the tone was close it is easy to add color of your choice with individual layers set to color or soft light or using gradient mapping with multiple colors. Maybe some dodge and burn here and there.

And thank you very much Mary I use Elements 3.0

Hope this gives you some ideas

Butch