Advice on an Important(?) Picture

[blue dog]

I ran across this Depression era photo and found it oddly intriguing. Does Depression + Intriguing = Important? I welcome all opinions.

It is a really scrungy negative. I lightly applied Polaroid D&S, liberally applied noise filters to the essentially imageless top and bottom areas, brought out a few things with screen and color dodge layers. In order to nail those dark areas I applied a duplicate multiply layer and unmasked the areas of interest.

I am left with alot of grain.

Undecided. Should I stop where I am, forge ahead or deposit it in the round file? I am leaning towards stopping where I am. What would you do?

[Squggle]

I haven't time to do this right now, but I'll have a bash later, in the meantime you could try:

- Dupe the bg layer
- Move tool, nudge using arrow keys : up, up, left, left
- Change blending mode to :'Darken' for light grain or 'Lighten' for dark grain.
- Then make a new layer, copy all layers and paste. (Ctrl, Alt, Shift,E)
- Move tool, nudge using arrow keys: down, down, right, right
- Change blending mode to: 'Lighten' if you used the 'Darken' mode previously or - 'Darken' if you used 'Lighten'.

Repeat the process using the vice versa.

Hope that helps.

[blue dog]

Thanks squggle. That's a new tehnique for me....However, I couldn't get it to work. Did you leave something out?

[Squggle]

Nope don't think so, I tried it on your image and it's not working because it's a very lo-res image.

What resolution image are you working on?

[Daviskw]

Hi Blue Dog

I think you have done an excellent job. You are at the point where the only way to get rid of more gray noise is to darken ...a trade off.

I gave it a try but could do no better than you maybe someone will have better advice.

Sure wish someone would develop a filter that measures adjacent colors to a threshold controlled gray. It would make restorations a lot easier. The smudgy gray is always frustrating. You can see some detail and tone but you just can't quite get it from behind the gray grunge.

Butch

[blue dog]

Squggle and Butch, Thanks for the feedback.

Squggle, it was scanned from a 116 negative at 600 dpi in 16 bit B&W. Originally I scanned everything at 1200 dpi in 24 bit color, but it was taking so long to digest it and I suspected it was overkill. I wonder, if you are used to working at 300 dpi, do you have to double the size of the moves for 600dpi? But then, the resolution of the posted version is only 1/3rd of that.

[blue dog]

Squggle,

Got it. Messed around with it and got it to work. My problem was in misunderstanding reverse. Works good with the obvious compromise in sharpness. Thanks.

[ahmetturker]

My work.

The life is beautiful.

[pepperspray]

Originally Posted by ahmetturker

My work.

The life is beautiful.

That's great!


Please tell me how you did it?