Hopeless for me: Got any ideas?

[gblount]

A friend is working on her families geneology and came up with these 2 pics.
I'm not sure how they were reproduced or scanned, but they are a mess.
I have tried converting them to grayscale and also working with the seperate channels, but these are just beyond my skill level.
Has anyone got any suggestions?
Thanks,
Greg

[Xaran]

Can you post larger images - very difficult with such small low quality jpg files.

Christine

[roger_ele]

My problem is that I am not sure how good you are looking to get this.

Here is my take on this, keeping an old look without the distractions of damage. Is this what you are looking for or are you trying for something else?

Roger

[Flora]

Hi Greg,

I had a go at the Lady's picture and cleaned it up a bit .... That was all I could do since the pictures posted have the size of a stamp .....

Is this how you got them .... or did you compress them?

You can attach up to 5 Files/Images to a post as long as they don't exceed the limit of 100KB each.
I think that a 800x600 pixels image at 72 pixel/inch is about the largest size still within the 100KB limit.

Wow Roger,

Excellent!!

How did you manage to enlarge the picture maintaining so many details?
I did doubled the size using the 'nearest neighbour' resampling as not to blur it even more.... but this is what I got ....

[gblount]

Thanks to everyone for the help on the pics. I couldn't get both pics to upload so I reducrd the size of both to under 100kb.
I'll try again this morning.

[gblount]

Roger, That is quite impressive!! If you have time one of these days, I'ld like to know how you did this.

Flora, I did manage to get the 2 files uploaded in larger sizes this morning. Sorry about posting such small ones last night. I guess I had the pic of the man over 100kb so it wouldnt upload. I finally decided that my total uploads could not be over 100 kb. (Duh!)

Thanks to both of you for taking the time to help me on this. I am just trying to get the pics where the folks are a little more recognizable and clean them up a bit. The friend told me that our local Walmart had done the two that I posted. It's not the first time I have seen such work from them.

Greg

[Flora]

Hi Greg,

Yep...the size is much, much better now!

I worked on the Lady's picture again....

I just did what you asked .... "....the folks are a little more recognizable and clean them up a bit " Please, let me know if this is more or less what you aimed to....

A tip for attaching Files/Images ... If you work with Photoshop, using the 'Save for Web' option you can specify the file size ... (attachment 2)

P.S. .... Did I understand you right? .... Had the pictures you posted already been 'restored' by Walmart??

[gblount]

Flora, Thank you so much. This is far superior to my efforts. (posted). I do ok on the basic restorations, but this was just more than my current skill level with PS.
My friend will be elated. Yes, the local Walmart did the ones you and Roger worked on. And they charged her for them.
I hope to be able to return the favor to you and Roger someday.
Thanks again, to both of you!!
Greg

[Flora]

I'm very happy you liked it!!

Just let me know if you'd like me to post the larger version....

[gblount]

Flora, If you have a high speed connection, you could post ot or send it to me .

Thanks,
Greg

[Noelf]

I just want to make sure I was clear on the post.

The pictures you posted were actually restored by Walmart? Or were those the originals that you sent in?

Cuz if those are the restored versions, I feel a lot better about Walmart doing restorals

- Noel

[Flora]

I do .... sending it right now!!!

P.S. For Spam prevention, I removed the e-mail address from your post ....

[roger_ele]

Greg wrote; Roger, That is quite impressive!! If you have time one of these days, I'ld like to know how you did this.

Did this late last night, and when I look at it today I realize I got the shape of the nose and jaw wrong ... but here is what I did ...

-converted to black & white through LAB
-cleaned up some with clone and healing brushes
-resized image, was working on pixel blocks instead of image detail

Flora wrote; How did you manage to enlarge the picture maintaining so many details?
I did doubled the size using the 'nearest neighbour' resampling as not to blur it even more.... but this is what I got ....

I think this next step was how Flora - only I just did it because of how the image looked ...
-added noise (gausian) to break up gloppiness (new word) in image, also gave it a feeling of more detail
-more clean up
-used clone to paint in face features, find a tone you like for the source and turn off aligned, then clone in little bits (tiny brush strokes of high opacity) of that tone to build image
-duplicated layer and blurred background a little, protected man from blurring with mask
-then adjusted tones with attached curve adjustments

The first image is the befare after Lab conversion to Black and white
The second image is repair work before curve adjustments
The third is the curve adjustment layers

The above work is probably not done in ecactly that order, I do as I see what to do, but it will give you a good idea as to the thought process

Hope this helps - any questions fire away!

Regards,
Roger

[Flora]

Hi Roger,

thank you so much for your explanation!!!

Adding noise.... Hating the unreal smooth, plastic look, I add noise to nearly every correction step I take in a restoration .... but it never occurred to me to do it here ..... I've just learned something new .... Thanks again!