How to make it better

[shanafagan]

Hi I got this very faded picture. I found that when i get more contrast back to the picture the more noise it has.

Heres the before and an after. What more can i do with the after cos im not happy with it. I cant realy put my finger on it. Thought id would be good to hav an outside perspective.

[Aleksman71]

Not much can be done.Picture is to smal and compression is to big,as you can see from partial zoom.

[shanafagan]

I scan it at 400dpi was that wrong?

[Aleksman71]

To even see if there is a hope for restoring, it is necessary to have big, uncompressed image.Try with 300 DPI.

Use tif for lossless compression,zip file and upload to http://www.uploading.com/ or
http://www.sendspace.com/ or http://www.yousendit.com/

[shanafagan]

Originally Posted by Aleksman71

To even see if there is a hope for restoring, it is necessary to have big, uncompressed image.Try with 300 DPI.

Use tif for lossless compression,zip file and upload to http://www.uploading.com/ or
http://www.sendspace.com/ or http://www.yousendit.com/

Ok I will try that. Thanks a mil for helping

[ontophehe]

In my opinion clean up the BG first then restore each by each face and dont try to finish it at one time...Keep up... you do a good job so far my friend

[shanafagan]

the faces, what technique do u think i should do. Usually i smooth out skin and keep the eye mouth nose details. whats the best way?

[ontophehe]

in this case I guess you have to use your imagination, guess...then redraw it by yourself by clone or pen...who know it look like the original or not ;-) just make it look good is ok. Show us when You done ...

[TommyO]

The image may not have enough detail to allow darkening without the noise. You can always denoise, but without detail it will just look washed out.

I thought that Apply Image may work better. But, it did not seem to. You could try rescanning and allow the scanner to try some screening, contrast and denoise. We normally prefer to do these in PS, but once in a while the scanner can achieve some good results (not often, but once in a while).

Here is the result of one full apply image using the blue channel, and one more at 20% opacity and some selective masking. I can't say that it looks any different than what you did. It looks like you already tried softening all but the more critical features.

[shanafagan]

Thanks a mil for everyones help. This is the best i could do with it. You really could spend donkey years on a restoration like this.

[TommyO]

Looks very nice. I like the vignette. One item... it looks like the posted image shows some duplication + move on the right side, like a layer accidentally got "nudged" in Photoshop. Was that supposed to be there? I did not see it in the 1st post.

[shanafagan]

I scraped the first post and re did the restoration. I didnt notice duplication, U have a great eye. I cant remember i think i could of nudged a layer to get rid of some scratches oops.