Dimpled texture

[wishy]

Hello,

Before I could stop one of my relatives, they'd pulled a snap from the wallet and were pushing it in my hand. I took a quick look and thought it shouldn't be a problem. . .

Of course, I now see that the cracks and dots that I reckoned would be easy are as nothing compared to trying to remove the golf ball dimples - texture from the original coated print.

I've tried softening, blurring, upping the contrast in sections and even desaturating and hand colouring (which was the most successful) but I'm stumped. Any of you smart cookies know a good method or action for removing the nasty little dots ... I'm fast running out of hairs to pull.

I've attached a copy (I hope) to give you an idea of the problem.



wishy

[pstewart]

Originally posted by wishy
... trying to remove the golf ball dimples - texture from the original coated print... [/B]

Maybe you could fix it by re-scanning. I don't know what scanner you use, but my Umax has a few "descreen" settings to get rid of magazine dots and such. On these settings it scans more than once. Setting your scanner this way could help with the dots caused by texture. If not, try scanning it again with the photo turned 90 degrees, then setting one overlapping layer to 50% opacity. I have done this with those awful "linen textured" photos with some success to get rid of the "sparkles" left by scanning. Good luck.

Phyllis

[pstewart]

I took a shot at dedimplifying (how's that for a word?) your pic. In case you can't fix the dimpling by re-scanning, here is a way to make it less noticeable.

1. Dupe and do dust&scratches at 2 then blend with darken.
2. Dupe the normal layer underneath and set it at 50% opacity.
3. Move that layer, the middle one, down and over two pixels with the arrow keys.
4. Flatten and proceed to retouch it.

Now you have a slightly blurred picture, but you can deal with that. Sharpen the eyes and mouth etc. and generally just do what you'd do to fix the blurries. If it comes down to a choice, it sure beats the bumpies!

Hopefully it's a choice you won't have to make. Betcha there is info on the web with better ways to handle this common problem. But I'm too lazy to look.

Phyllis

[Stephen M]

I have had to deal with this more times than I would like. Here are the steps for both flatbed scanning and Photoshop correction.

Scan twice from two different angles - long then short edge so there is a 90 degree difference between the scans, or scan once then rotate and scan again 180 degrees different with the same scanner settings (auto toning off). The scans should be straight against the ruler edge of your scanner if possible.

Make both scans the same direction in Photoshop and then copy one to the other as a new layer. Align in difference mode and rotate the upper layer if required to fit the scans together. Crop down so there are no weird edges if the two scans do not overlap right.

Change layer blend mode from difference to darken - this will remove the white spots. To remove the black spots the layer would be set to lighten.

This technique works because the flatbed scanners wide directional lightsource amplifies the flaws in the surface of the original, so scanning from another direction and merging them together will 'cancel out' the unwanted pattern due to the different lighting.

You could also try the actions/brushes etc section of this site for my two Photoshop 5.x or higher actions - AutoScanSpotting and SmartDuster. A small article I wrote which goes into this with greater depth can be found here:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binar...gspotting.html

Then there are the ISO noise reduction actions for v6 or higher which can be used with good effect too:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binar...V_links.html#G

Regards,

Stephen Marsh.

[Doug Nelson]

Anything you do in an editing program is going to soften the image. It can be made to appear sharper, however (see Jak's tutorial for one way).

There are many possible ways to approach this. Here's yet another. For this one I simply converted to CMYK and used the minimum amount of Gaussian Blur on each individual channel to eliminate the pattern. Then I applied USM.

No idea why it works, but it seems to.

[thomasgeorge]

You could also try here:
http://www.aim-dtp.net/aim/techniques/index.htm

Look for the filter ( all of the ones here are free ) called Rank Replace ...this filter seems to do a very good job at removing textures, dust etc. I used the setting of 5 from the pull down menu, applied twice, duplicated layer, applied high pass filter set blending mode to soft light and flattened. Good luck...Tom

[wishy]

Hey folks,

Thanks for the feedback.

I've downloaded the suggested actions and have been trying out the scanning tips but I still don't seem to be able to get it right. In fact I still can't really achieve the results you've submitted

(There was also a good article on noise reduction on one of the pages I was directed to which involved eight separate scans and layers of varying opacity - this didn't cure my problem but did smooth out other artefacts)

Perhaps it's because I'm working with a much larger original than I uploaded? Since I have to resize for printing, am I better off scanning at high resolution and working on this scan before resizing, or working on the resized scan?

Thanks for all your ideas - I'll keep working on it and resist the temptation to stick a new texture over it to disguise the dimples...

wishy

[Stephen M]

Wishy, if you crop out a very small section at the high resoluton that includes both detail and non detial and light/dark tones - then a suitable correction method can be devised...if you are really lucky an action could be written to help. A low res image does not give the list the same problems you face, so it is no surprise that you are having more problems than others.

And yes, working high res and finally resampling a dupe down is the best approach to heavy restoration - as it can hide the retouching to some degree by smoothing things out in the averaging process of the resize.

Stephen Marsh.

[Rachel]

Another way you might want to try..

Go into each channel individually and apply the following:

Blur>Gaussian Blur (around 2.0 or so)
Noise>Median (around 1-2)
Sharpen>Unsharpen Mask (set to desired settings)

You might then have to unsharpen mask the entire rgb image after doing this to each channel.

I use the above method to get rid of moire patterns from images scanned in from books, newspapers or magazines and it works beautifully.

[dcarr]

I gave it one shot with Alien Skin Image Doctor (I'm starting to sound like a commericial) And here are the results. There are many tweaks in the program, but I just used the jpeg repair in default setting.
Debbie

[R Dinwiddie]

It's been a long time since anyone posted a suggested solution to the problem of removing the "golf ball" pits in textured prints that stubbornly remain after a scan.

Well, I am an absolute newbie to RetouchPro, but I've been restoring and retouching photos for nearly 10 years, so I've had to develop a bit of experience in dealing with this problem.

This is my very first post, so please bear with me. I frequently have solutions to many different kinds of problems present themselves to me in dreams or when I'm just relaxing and "daydreaming." On one such occasion a probable solution came to me like a bolt of lightning.

Our problem is that we have been dealing with "reflected" light by using either a scanner or hi-res camera. The textured dimples will reflect the light that bounces around inside of a scanner from many different angles, and just rotating the print and using layers and various filters will minimize only a very small amount of these reflections. And, a camera will also record the reflections from ambient daylight or room lighting.

Before my "revelation," I thought that having a single-point light source falling on a textured print at just the right angle would largely minimize the problem if I cut out nearly all other ambient light, so I jury rigged a light box with a hi-res camera on one side and the print at the other, with blackened interior walls to absorb as much ambient light as possible except for a slit in a sidewall through which my light source could be outfitted to strike light on the print at varying experimental angles.

Yet, no matter how many angles I tried, there was nothing that completely eliminated the textured print "pit" reflections. It seems apparent that light from even a single point source falling on the surface of a textured print must bounce around inside the texturing and come back out at multiple angles, including the straight on (perpendicular) angle at which the print is being viewed or recorded by a camera.

My flashpoint idea said to me that I had use no reflected light at all. How? By using the print like a transparency and having the light shine through it from its backside to the camera.

I used a slide viewer as my light source and mounted a textured print on its glass surface. I masked all of the rest of the glass area around the print in black paper and again used my "black box" to eliminate almost all other light that could fall on the print's textured surface. Obviously, the back side of each print must be clean with nothing written or printed on it, or such things will have to be eliminated in your photo-editing software. The camera was mounted on a tripod so that a suitable timed exposure could be made since light coming through a print will be much dimmer than light falling on and reflecting from its surface. The shot should be made in macro mode for small prints to a fill, as nearly as possible, the entire area of the camera's digital light sensor (I'm assuming you would be using a hi-res digital camera set for its very highest resolution). Pin cushion and other types of lens distortions are now a very quick/easy fix in Photoshop.

Believe me, THIS WORKS 100%!!! I now use this method exclusively to digitize textured prints. It totally eliminates the problem. And, once you have your very own inexpensive equipment put together, and have done it a few times, you'll likely not ever need to try anything else. It becomes faster and easier every time you need to do it again. Please let me know how it works for you!

Rhonda

[chillin]

Thanks R Dinwiddie for the technique.
Up till now, I've always relied on Image Analyzer or ImageJ
Below is a sample of an Image Analyzer outcome

[R Dinwiddie]

Hey Chillin,

Thanks for the reply. It's a little too difficult to really see your outcome online, but the technique I described is really worth a try. It works for me without transferring a hint of texture, and nothing is lost due to noise filters and or other type of deliberate blurring unless the photo really needs a it anyway. Good luck.

Rhonda

[R Dinwiddie]

2nd Reply to Chillin,

I didn't notice the difference between your final results, using the tools you describe, and the original scan simply because I hadn't seen the original scan in earlier posts. But I have now, and the difference is quite obvious. You, and others, have done a remarkable job! However, my technique, I truly believe, is far superior in final results and far less time consuming than any others that I have seen described and/or displayed.

I will soon be preparing some examples to show the actual original scans and final results of my technique. I will try to get it done this week and maybe even today if time permits.

Rhonda

[chillin]

Thanks eager to see them

[R Dinwiddie]

The two attachments display an original textured photo and the edited version with texture removed using the technique I described in previous recent posts by transmitting light through the photo rather than reflecting light from its surface. All traces of the tiny wavy lines have been removed. Please let me know if you try it and display your results.

Rhonda