Photo Restoration - - Faded Photo restoration HELP!

samwise · #1 07-06-2005, 02:01 PM

I was given this photo to see if I can resotore it back to it's original colored self and I am new at photo restoration. I was browsing through the forums and am really amazed at some of the work that is done here. I was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction as to where to start on this photo. I have tried making a selection of the area and using levels and curves but it doesn't seem to be working too great. Is there anything else I can try or should I just work harder at the levels and curves?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Kraellin · #2 07-06-2005, 03:29 PM

samwise,

welcome to RP!

now, i'm not that good with restoring facial skin tones. flora is much better at this than i and maybe she'll take a shot at this. but, i did make an attempt.

i did start with a curves adjustment layer. you've got a lot of washed out areas on the baby's face. so, first we reduce that a bit.

i then make a duplicate layer of the base layer and ran a fast fix filter plugin on it to get some better saturation and contrasts here and there. just a general fix.

next, i made a selection of the baby's face and went with hue/saturation/lightness to try to add back some reds and yellows to the baby's face. we want to get some color back there.

however, not all of the color returns, so i did a little bit of cloning on the baby's face to fill the remaining white wash outs. not much, just enough to get some skin tone and texture back.

there was still some texture missing across the whole face so i added a very small amount of noise and then a softened to blur it a bit.

i ran another HSL to adjust the colors a bit more, then auto contrast and auto saturation

and somewhere in there was another curves just to get a bit more contrast across the whole picture.

i then selected each eye and sharpened them separately to bring them back after the noise addition and soften effect.

it sounds like a lot and others could probably do all this much quicker and with fewer steps, but i did get a decent final result.

Craig

samwise · #3 07-06-2005, 03:46 PM

Thanks for the tips and all the work you did. I was also wondering how to get rid of the oval fading in the middle caused by the picture frame matte? I tried to desaturate the picture then used levels to match the inside of the oval with the outside. It worked okay but I lost a lot of detail especially on the right hand and face. There is a picture of what I got so far attached. Hopefully Flora will reply to this thread, she in my humble opinion does some really amazing work.

Again thank you for you help!

Billfields · #4 07-06-2005, 05:12 PM

I think you have made a great start with this. Sometimes I find that just removing the color also appears to remove some of the detail. I would take what you have and recolor it. Below is a quick and sloppy example. Clearly you would want to spend a lot more time and care matching colors and staying in the lines <G> —this was just to give you and idea of what I mean.

Bill

Gary Richardson · #5 07-07-2005, 03:10 AM

Hi Samwise,

Had a bit of a go with your picture (still not happy with result, but don't have too much spare time at moment).

Basically I selected eliptical area, copied to new layer. adjusted using levels to darken, and pull colour a little.

Cloned out join line, also used clone brush at low opacity to even background out.

Upped saturation on face area, hand tinted using colour layer.

Also (mistakenly) coloured clothes, (not happy with result at all).

Hope this helps.

Flora · #6 07-07-2005, 06:13 AM

Hi samwise,

Welcome to RP!

Thanks for your comments guys.....

First thing I did here was to balance shadows and highlights ... btw, samwise, you really did a very good job with it!!!

but yes, some details were lost along the way ....

I started out like Gary with an oval selection around the fading, but wasn't satisfied with it, so, I created a channel mask using the Red channel and strongly increased its contrast with the Levels ... this gave me a selection of all faded areas inside and outside of the oval ....

Ctrl+J I copied the slection to its own Layer, and, to gradually add tone to the highlights/fadings, Ctrl+I Inverted it and set the blending to Soft Light ...

Duplicated the 'selection Layer' (keeping the 'Soft Light' blending) and strongly blurred it ... This procedure added even more tone, some contrast and sharpness ... (if you try this, just look how stronger the details get with each step ... the baby's right hand you were worried about for example..)..

Not completely happy yet, I duplicated the 'blurred inverted Layer' (adjusting its Opacity) ... even more details and I started getting some colour back ....

You can start 'working' from here, or you can duplicate this last Layer ... until you reach a 'starting' point you are satisfied with .... Some areas will get too dark in the procedure, you can correct them using Layer Masks ...

samwise · #7 07-07-2005, 10:11 AM

Again thank you everyone for your help. This morning I tried to finish what I started with the desaturated version that I made and have attached my finished version at the bottom. I am not really happy with the result but it is my first time trying this so I guess it is not bad. I am really pleased with the result that Flora got and I think I will try what she did and see if I can do a little bit of a better job and keep some more detail in the photo. Let me know what you think about this picture and if the colors are good or are they way off.

Thank you everybody for your help!

PS. Flora if I need a more detailed explanation would you be willing to do that?

jenjen · #8 07-07-2005, 09:36 PM

Flora,

How do you do a channel mask? When i go to the channel palette there isn't a mask button at the bottom. I've never heard that before.

jenjen · #9 07-07-2005, 10:54 PM

Ok here is my try. I did a fast job about a hour and took the first steps that Flora said. I also took each seperate piece and colored it on a seperate layer. What do you think. Remember i'm just starting out.

samwise · #10 07-08-2005, 08:36 AM

JenJen,

I think that is pretty good and I like your color selection. I am still trying to figure out the channel mask thing to get a good result but no luck so far. What steps did you take to get the channel mask to work so well?

Thanks for everybodies help on this one so far!!

jenjen · #11 07-08-2005, 08:44 AM

Thanks, but i'm just learning too. I'm not too sure about the channel mask, but this is what i did. I clicked on the red channel and went up to the
Image ~~>adust~~> Levels and adjusted each indiviual channel. You just sort of go to each channel in the levels pull down arrow at the top and mess with each one until it looked right. I based my image off of Flora's picture since hers always looks so great. I hope that helps.

Xaran · #12 07-08-2005, 09:14 AM

To create a channel mask drag one of the channels to the new channel button at the bottom of the channels window.

Christine

Flora · #13 07-08-2005, 10:09 AM

Hi,

samwise,

I think you did a very nice job on your picture!!

You got the details out ... it just needs some 'brightening' ...

samwise, Jen,

Christine has already pinted you in the right direction, but a step-by-step explanation on creating a channel mask can be found in this Tutorial ... The tutorial is about 3 ways I use for 'enhancing' faded details in pictures ...The channel mask way can be found scrolling down the page to Method 3: CHANNEL MASK ....

In my Tutorial I used the Red Channel, but it could be any of the three as long as it offers a nice contrast to start with ....

There, after copying my selection to its own Layer, I changed its Blending to 'Multiply' .... you can try it for your picture, but I was happier with the result I got following the steps described in my previous post ....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flora

Ctrl+J I copied the slection to its own Layer, and, to gradually add tone to the highlights/fadings, Ctrl+I Inverted it and set the blending to Soft Light ...

Duplicated the 'selection Layer' (keeping the 'Soft Light' blending) and strongly blurred it ... This procedure added even more tone, some contrast and sharpness ... (if you try this, just look how stronger the details get with each step ... the baby's right hand you were worried about for example..)..

Not completely happy yet, I duplicated the 'blurred inverted Layer' (adjusting its Opacity) ... even more details and I started getting some colour back ....

Hope this helps ....

samwise · #14 07-08-2005, 02:32 PM

Thanks everybody for all your help I really appreciate it! I am now finished with this picture and am pretty happy with the result. Take a look and tell me what you think?

Thanks all!

Billfields · #15 07-08-2005, 04:16 PM

I think it looks great. The fade oval is gone and the colors match the photo well. Pat yourself on the back!

Bill