blotchy

[Britsdad]

Hi guys,
Can someone tell me why I'm getting a "blotchiness" on these kids skin? I can't seem to get rid of it without blurring the hell out of it.
I've scanned it in at 300, 600, and 1200 dpi with an Epson Perfection 1250 scanner with unsharpe mask on and off, with no colour correction and with it. I've even photographed it, but what ever I do I still get this mottled look!
Any ideas please?
Regards....John
I'm not sure if it will show up at 100k but here goes.
Edit: I'm in the process of restoring it, but it's not finished yet, I've desaturated it to get rid of a lot of the staining, and will add colour to it later.

[DCobb]

I'm not sure if I accomplished what you wanted or not. I used the noise reduction Filter>Noise>Reduce Noise. I then put the completed picture back on the old and used a layer mask and painted back the original sharpenss of the eyes and mouth.

dc

[Britsdad]

Nice one dc,
I'd tried that, but didn't get anywhere near the results you did! where am I going wrong?
You said "I then put the completed picture back on the old and used a layer mask and painted back the original sharpenss of the eyes and mouth" do you mean you duped the layer and ran the filter, then added a layer mask and painted out (or in, depending on the mask )
I've ended up with this.....as you can see there is a lot of "crud" around....can't seem to shift it!!!
Cheers....John
Edit:--if anyones interested here's the original scanned with no adjustments

[des151]

Hi John,
I'm just a novice, but I wanted to give this blotchy picture a try. (just the blotchy stuff)
Ray

[DCobb]

Hi John,

I use Photoshop CS3. In Photoshop I had both your original and retouched picture open. Make sure the selection tool CTRL V is active and put the tool on the retouched picture. While holding the shift key--this must be done to get both pictures to perfectly align--slide the retouched picture on top of the old picture. This will cover the old picture and you will only see the retouched. However, in the layers palette you will see that both are there. The retouched picture should be the top picture in the layers palette. Add a layers mask to this top layer--the retouched picture. Then selecting your brush tool and being sure that black is the foreground, and the mask--not the picture is active--paint on the eyes and mouth and any place else you want the bottom picture to come through. If you make a mistake press the X key and this will swith the foreground color to white and you can paint your mistake out. Painting with gray or lowering the opacity on your brush tool will also control the strength of the effect. Also, I would flatten the image before doing any colorization.

I think I got this right.

Went back and looked at the settings that I had used in the filter: Strength 9, Preserve details 10%, Sharpness 13% and checked the box--Remove JPEG artifacts. Try these and see if it helps.

Was just looking at your pict. Don't know the sequence you followed, but I believe that the colorization would be done following the retouching--something to consider if per chance you reversed the two.

dc

[mistermonday]

Hi BritsDad, with images such as these which are underexposed, it is best to clean up the noise before doing anything to the image. I ran my Noiseware plugin (Imagenomic). Then in Photoshop ran the Image>Adjust>AutoColor which corrected both the color and the brightness (or brought it into an workable range). As you can see the blotches are gone.
Good luck with the rest of the restoration.
Regards, Murray

[duwayne]

I just applied a low frequency filter to remove the splotches using Neat Image and then blended original with 80% opacity of filtered copy. Also noted that there is a screen in the original scan. You might want to turn on de-screening (for fine prints) and rescan.

[Alison]

Hi Britsdad,

I used the levels to bring each channel to the majority of the information. I then used a program called Neat Image (download for free @ neatimage.com - the free version has some limitations). I then dodged the eyes a little and did some very nasty cleaning up just to give you an idea of what neat image can do.

Alison.

[Alison]

Did a bit more work here. I think the blanket, or whatever it is, is terribly distracting. Might go back and give it a new background later

[Britsdad]

Hey guys (and gals )
Thanks for some great input, it made me look again, and I think I may have sorted it, (what do you think?) I did blur it somewhat and used Photoshop noise reduction on a duped layer and then layer masked it off and brought some detail back, then I flattened image did a bit of smudging, then converted to LAB and ran unsharpe mask to the lightness channel and converted back to RGB, see below for the result.
Alison and duwayne...I downloaded Neat Image but the pic is far too big for the trial version I think I'll have to buy it, it does a great job.
Murray... another noise ware product I'll have to find out which one's the cheapest
dc...is there a reason why you duplicated the image rather than just duplicated the layer? Does it work better? or is it just something you like to do? (just curious)
Regards....John

[DCobb]

Hi John,

I sometimes start my posts by stating that I am not a professional. In this case just duplicating the layer would work. I have a not-so-hot workflow that has come about through the trial and error process. There are times when it is necessary to have a duplicate image. I believe that using the FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) filter to take out textured backgrounds is one of those cases. The direction with that state to duplicate the layer and on the second image to flatten it before running the FFT filter.

Your question is well taken and I would say you are correct in asking why, as it is an unnecessary step. Sorry about that.

Oh, by the way, I do have the professional version of Neat Image and did try it on your picture. It came back that the image did not have a uniform RGB background and would not build a good profile. I am sure that if I got out the directions and studied them, there is no doubt, a way to build a profile. The thing I did notice is that as I changed the sliders there was not a simutaneous change in the onscreen image. If you do use Neat Image you are going to get a global change in the picture unless there is some type of masking.

dc

[Britsdad]

dc: thanks for the explanation....I, like you could start every post with "I am not a pro" but I'm an enthusiastic amateur
And, no I don't have a pro version of Neat Image, I just used the trial version for the post, although my finished large image did look very much the same. (just took longer to get there with selective blurs ect.)
Thanks for all the help, everyone......John

[Alison]

Hi John,

Is it possible to make a selection for neat image to work on ? I should go and try it

Your image is looking good

Alison

[Britsdad]

Hi Alison: good suggestion, I never thought of that, silly me
I have done the print now and it came out very well, but I will keep your idea in mind for next time.
Thanks again....John