Badly scratched photo.

[nebgranny]

I have a photo someone sent me to practice on. I am unable to post it as do not have permission to do so and do not want to until it is said to be ok.

It is a color picture , and it looks like it may have been on the floor and someone walked on it and it slipped over the floor making a lot of deep and nasty scratrches. Can someone help with steps that might work to try and redo this picture please? I am yet using photoshop 6. Thanks Neb

[Flora]

Hi nebgranny,

Glad you are working with Photoshop!!!

It is very difficult to give specific advice without a picture to work on .... Maybe you could crop a damaged part of the background and post only that ....

Anyway, in a case like the one you described, I would try these methods:

*Clone good parts (sampled from sorrounding areas) on the damaged ones.

*Copy and Float method ... meaning:

* Use the Lasso Tool to loosely select around the damaged area.

* Go to Select>Transform Selection and move the selection over a good part of your picture.

* Ctrl+J copy the 'good part' to its own Layer, move it to cover the damage and, with the help of a Layer mask, adjust for tone contrast and colour.

Hope this helps...

P.S. Did you receive my PM about the newTutorial on Layer Masks?

[nebgranny]

Thank You Flora:
I will try the functions you recommended.
I did receive the information about the tutorial and I sent a private message back to you thanking you for the information. I have read it through and it is very clear and I just need to re-read it when time allows.

I will post an example of the area for you and others to see. I realize it is hard to determine what is needed when no example is present. Thanks for suggesting it. Neb

[nebgranny]

Well here is a part of the picture which includes the worst scratches. Please note there are scratches to the face as well. Does this help? Neb

[Gary Richardson]

hi Neb,

As a quick tip for reducing some of the smaller scratches, try the following.

1. Duplicate image, set blend mode to darken.
2. Using move tool, move New layer down by a couple of pixels.
3. Erase this layer in areas where it causes degredation of original image.

This is best for plain areas, such as the dark area behind the woman, and for the large plain areas on her red jacket.

[chrishoggy]

For these type of scratches on the background, I use replace colour tool (Image>adjustments>Replace colour). By selecting the colour range within the scratched area with the +dropper, you can then darken them to the same colour as the background itself. The Jacket and face would need some cloning from good areas to get some of the bad scratches out

[winwintoo]

Is this a case for the old scan it at a different angle and combine the images trick??

The attached image is a section of a picture that was rolled spindled and mutilated ruthlessly. I managed to smooth it out and then scanned it several times, placing it in a different direction on the scanner bed each time. Then I brought the images into Photoshop Elements and tried variations of stacking them to see if I could eliminate some of the damage.

The first two sections of the attached image were scanned at 180° angles to each other and were laying so the scanner light passed along the longest tears rather than across them. When I stacked the images, I set the blend mode of the top layer to "overlay". I also tried switching the layers around until I determined that I had achieved the best damage removal.

The third frame is the result. Nothing else has been done to it.

Hope this helps.

Margaret

[Flora]

Hi all,

nebgranny,

I used the Polaroid Dust&Scratches Filter first, (can be downloaded free here,

Created a new blank Layer, set its blending to 'darken' and, sampling from the darkest part of the background, I painted over the BG scratches with a soft brush (Opacity 40-50%)

Used the Clone Tool on the jacket and face.

Used the Blur Tool to minimize the 'clone' streaks..

Added a bit of noise.

[dcom]

hi............ even i have d same problem. i have an old black n white photo which is totally spoiled............. i just want to take out the spotes and scartches from his face................ plz do reply ................here i have uploaded the pic.......... i have to erase those white patches from his face.. how do i do it? with clone tool?