Help restoring old picture with many blemishes

[brookmt]

I am a newbie to restoring photographs and have an old one with many blemishes.

I thought the damage on the right side could be fixed by copying and mirroring an equal section of the left side and then blending what was left over to fix. And I thought I could copy and mirror the baby's left side of face and place it over the right side.

Then I started looking more at the picture and saw the scratch marks on the older boys face and all the brown stains on the white border.

The original picture is only 2.5 in x 3.5 in., and I have scanned it at 1200 DPI as a TIFF. From here, I don't know where to start on restoring this picture.

Any and all help would be appreciated.

Thank you,
Matt

[digitalrose]

Here is my attempt not perfect but better I think. I am just an amateur hanging out with all you pros LOL.

[brookmt]

Wow! That looks amazing! What were the steps you took?

[mistermonday]

Matt, welcome to RetouchPro. The attached image is an example of the direction I would take with this restoration. It represents only a few minutes of work and I did not do much fine work, especially since the file is small.
- I recommend replacing background as these subjects will be easy to extract from the current BG
- Mirror part of the baby's head, jump it to its own layer, add a layer mask and blend it in.
- The woman's left arm can be done the same way. I only did the shoulder but you can cut and paste more of the arm.
- Cloning and healing to clean up all the blemishes, scratches, etc
- Overall color correction, reducing red and putting back some yellow in the skin.
- Apply a small amount of sharpening.
With a high res scan such as the one you have and a modest effort, you should be able to get an very good restoration of this image.
Regards, Murray

[smurfing]

My (very amateur) effort

Smurf

[digitalrose]

hEY Smurfing that looks great...I didn't like the way her hair looked so I cloned some hair from another pic I found of hair in the fities...I actually use photoimpact but have learned to adapt photoshop techs to my program..

Mainly waht I did was use the clone brush like crazy and I guess it would be the heal brush in photoshop...I also played with the levels a bit to brighten the overall picture up.

[philbach]

Well I first used global color correction and did use one half of the baby's head to cover the blemished part. Some blurring and healing etc.

[Cupcake]

Here is a web picture.

[brookmt]

Thank you everyone for sharing your attempts. I am learning a lot. I will be posting examples of my progress soon. It is a slow go. I work full time during the day and have a wife and three kids, all with there places to go and things to do. I am trying to be very pragmatic in the process and document every step I do and record the results, so I can learn and apply the wisdom on future projects.

Again thank you for all your help. It is greatly appreciated.

Matt

[brookmt]

Here is my current Work In Progress. I still need to finish working on the mother's right side.

How can I bring out the details in the little boys features? His face is very washed out. Even in the original scan?

[tchas1949]

I tried some of the tips mentioned here, such as copy and mirror. In the end though, I got carried away using dodge highlights and burn midtones to give more depth to the faces. That cost me important details in the parents hair and made the boy's eyes a little dark. I cloned some color from the father's face to the boy's. After I selected the right side of the baby's face, CMD-J, and Edit > Transform > Mirror, I then had to Edit >Transform > Rotate to align the mirrored half face with the baby's orientation. I also had a chance to try AKVIS MultiBrush on this project. Haven't decided yet if it is significantly better, than Photoshop's default tools (e.g healing brush and clone), so I'm not sure if I should buy it. Also used plug-ins from PhotoWiz, iCorrect, Neat Image, Topaz, and Anthropics, but didn't keep a log of what I used or when. Sorry.

I am very impressed with what some of the others have done already. You set the bar very high for the rest of us.

[brookmt]

Tchas1949, that is a great idea to use the dad's face to clone onto the boys face. I didn't even think of that. I can do the same thing with the mom's face onto the baby's face. Thanks for the idea!

[micpro]

Hi Matt,

I am also fairly new when it comes to restoring images, but maybe my approach can help you. I didn't change that much cause I like the image how it is..well except for the damage of course...

For the background I used the Pattern Stamp Tool painting with a pattern I made from a good area. Results were acceptable but not good enough,..at least I had a start for the damaged right side.

So,..what I did is pretty straight forward,...just using the clone Tool, the Healing Brush and after that the Patch Tool to give it back some of the texture.

Same tools to fix the rest...

With the hair of that woman I first didn't know what to do,...and I still don't know how the original hairstyle could be look like,..but I tried to paint in some hair with a normal Brush..

Same "technique" I used for the shoulder,..just painted in the missing part and again give back some texture with the Patch Tool...not perfect but at least another method

Missing eye information taken from the undamaged area of the baby.

For the skin of the boy,..I duplicated the image, set the mode to multiply, added a black layer mask and painted back the skin with a white brush,..adjust the layer opacity..

..its ok..but as I said it could be another approach and you can go further messing around with color, d&b, etc..

Oh..and as a last step I used the High Pass Filter to sharpen the image...


Cheers

Michael

[brookmt]

I am finally through with the restoration. Thank you to everyone that helped and gave me suggestions. I had read about Neat Image on another thread and used the application on the original scan. I was amazed at how well it filtered noise out of the picture. That made it easier to Clone and Heal parts of the picture, because it had a cleaner source to work with.

Again, thank you to everyone.