need help with damaged photo

[shane_thib]

i'm having trouble adjusting levels to bring back details in this photo. can someone give me some pointers?

[Scoopex]

I managed to get some detail back, but it is hard with such a small image.

[0lBaldy]

I would re-scan at a higher resolution in color with all adjustments turned off.

Even if it is a B/W or Grayscale picture it may be better to scan in color since the color channels may contain details that might otherwise get lost...

Turn off "Fare" and all dust & scratch removal, and any denoising, despeckle etc.. and turn off all automatic settings like levels, brightness/contrast, color, etc.,.

You might even make three passes and do a dark scan, normal scan, and a light scan to capture all the detail possible and combined later.

Post all three scans here for more suggestions

[TommyO]

OlBaldy is correct. Make sure you scan in color. After that, two additional options are:
1. Try bringing it into Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and see if the recovery slider will do anything significant;
2. Try using Apply Image in Photoshop. It is the same as calculations. By examining the color channels, it essentially builds data from the best channel into a weak channel (or the composite).

You could also use levels or curves on those highlights, but you'll have to use the mask to prevent adjusting the normal areas if the image.

If you run into any trouble, post the high res image externally and give us the link. We'd be glad to experiment some.

[moonchild64]

Not sure if this helps ... best I could do with a small picture ... plus I just don't have the knowledge to do better yet.

The first one was done by making it B&W and using topaz adjust. The 2nd was done combining mine and the one posted before mne (sorry ... short term memory so I don't recall who it was) and using a high pass sharoening.

File0002MyTry.jpg
File0002MyTry2.jpg

[Scoopex]

Indeed as TommyO said if you can rescan a larger version of the image, I will certainly have another go at it if you'd like.