Photo Restoration - - her daughter died of cancer (Help me)

pixeltickler · #1 07-12-2005, 06:31 PM

Hi All,

I haven't been around in a year and I wasn't a big poster before that so most of you won't know me, but I hope you'll help anyway.

Ok long story short. I've been working as a Notary and I went to this sweet, gentle old lady's house to sign some papers and up on the wall were tons of pictures of her and her descendants all the people reoccured several times except one -- I only saw one of this particular girl and the picture was sun faded or somehow altered the colors. I asker her about the picture and she said it was her daughter who had died from cancer. Now I knew why there was only one picture of her. Any way I offered to take the picture home and see if I could restore it for her. No charge to her just to see if I could do it. Well I hate to say I've been away from photoshop so long that I am a bit out of my depth here. I'm attaching the orignal scan and the adjustments I've been able to make but it's not good enough. her forehead is all washed out and I don't know where to go from here... so please help me. What am I missing. I didn't do anything fancy here just added a few adjustment layers in levels, curves and hue/sat.

http://othelaproperties.com/mrstomeydaughter.jpg
http://othelaproperties.com/mrstomey...r_adjusted.jpg

The banding just showed up in the jpg versions of this pic but isn't in my psd version.

So here I sit awaiting the brilliance of y'all.

Thanks in advance

Diane (the pixeltickler)

PatrickB · #2 07-12-2005, 08:22 PM

I must admit, I am not into restoration at all, but had to have a go at this one.

Here is mine, it's very basic, but will maybe help you.

What I did:

Adjusted the colors by using curves, using the neutral color picker somewhere in the background of the image.
Used a multiply layer to bring back the contrast to the picture.
And finally used a masked screen layer to lighten up the hair.

Maybe you like it that way but others can do better for sure!

Patrick

pixeltickler · #3 07-12-2005, 09:11 PM

Thank you Patrick. You got much better tone in the face than I did. What do your numbers look like on your adjustment layers? Oh and for anyone else that wants to give this a whack, per her mother that shirt is yellow.

Thanks to all who assist. The gods will bless you in their own way!
Diane (the pixeltickler)

Duv · #4 07-12-2005, 11:03 PM

I made the assumption that the band around the picture was the actual tone and that the rest of the picture had a cyan cast. Basically, I applied a filter which was the opposite of cyan and adjusted. Added a bit of my own color to the eyes, not sure what the originals were like.

Cheers
Dave

pixeltickler · #5 07-12-2005, 11:27 PM

Thanks Dave,

Nope I think that outer band is supposed to be white. And her mom said her eyes were hazel. But awsome anyway.

Diane

Hephaestos · #6 07-13-2005, 12:56 AM

Here I just set the black and white points on a curves adjustment. There was still a slight cyan cast so I raised red channel brightness to compensate.

Gary Richardson · #7 07-13-2005, 01:36 AM

Hi Diane, Had to have a go with this one.

Flora · #8 07-13-2005, 05:03 AM

Hi everybody,

Diane,

I also had to have a go ...
What realaqu said about having friends like you ...

I tried to change as little as possible to keep the picture as this Lady has seen it and got used to all this time .... I have removed the white border ... but it would be no problem at all to 'put it back' ....

Take care

pixeltickler · #9 07-13-2005, 09:40 AM

Heph, Realaqu, Gary and Flora,

You guys ar all awe inspiring to me! Thank you so much for your takes.

Heph I did that too except the part about removing the Cyan cast with the red channel boost; how does one do that exactly?

Realaqu, Gary Flora! WOW!!! but a little description on what you did would help me recreate it, pretty pleaaaasssse.

Flora how did you get such amazing skin tone specifically. And her hair is perfect what did you do? I repeat you are amazing, but I wanna learn to

Gary you got the background and around the edge perfect. what did you do? I don't see and of the odd colour anomalies I was having. Teach me oh sage ones.

Thank you all so much for your help! I am truly humbled when I come here.

Diane

realaqu · #10 07-13-2005, 02:49 PM

Inspired by Floria's amazing work

I started this project from the very begining, somebody could give me a hand to improve my work. thanks

realaqu

Gary Richardson · #11 07-13-2005, 03:40 PM

Hi Diane,

Didn't do too much. Did a rectangular selection on the good area. Select/Inverse
to change selection to border area.

Now did a levels adj to even out tone. This caused some discolouration in some areas. So created a new layer, using clone tool set to colour, cloned out discoloured areas using colour from good areas (had to adjust Opacity of clone tool to get reasonable blend). Clone tool to normal, and cloned out areas that still showed.

Flattened image, then used a levels adj layer to colour correct and improve contrast.

Lastly, created new layer. set blend mode to colour, and coloured skin a little with a tone taken from one of Bruce Beard's charts. Adjusted layer Opacity for effect.

Ditto hair.

Evened out background colour in similar manner.

Hope this helps.

Realaqu, there's no improvement needed on your image, really good work.

berwin · #12 07-13-2005, 04:56 PM

Hello Diane,

My heart goes out for the young lady and her mother. She inspired me to feel for her. I worked on the full res image and it is still on my HD, in case you need it.

Started with FFT to get rid of the pattern. Adjusted Levels and curves in 16bit. Made tons of local adjustments, lots of layers and layer masks too numerous to mention.

Greetings,

berwin

Flora · #13 07-13-2005, 05:39 PM

Hi everybody,

thanks for your kind words!!!

Great jobs evryone!

This picture had texture, was faded and the colours were 'off' ...

After running it through the FFT filter to remove the texture (here you can find ByRo's excellent Tutorial on how to use it and the link to where download it) and enhancing details by balancing shadows/highlights (different ways for doing this are described in this Tutorial) I did the following:

Used the Curves 'Set Grey Point' on the background (my right of the picture) close to the top of her head ... This improved things a lot ... removed the cyan cast and brought back some of the original colour.
After that, I selectively (by this I mean loosely select the part I want to work on with the Lasso Tool) used Levels and Brightness/Contrast Adjustment Layers for improving tone and contrast ... and Hue/Saturation, Color Balance and Selective Colors Adjustment Layers for correcting and enhancing the colours .... skin included...
Hue/Saturation on her eyes ...

All the corrections I do, be it for tone and contrast or for colours, I do 'by eye' meaning I move the sliders untils it looks OK ... If Hue/Saturation doesn't satisfy me, I try Selective Colors, Color Balance, Levels or Curves, in other words I try everything until I'm satisfied with what I see on my monitor ... That's why it's sometimes difficult to explain exactly how I got to a particular result ....

Still ... I hope this helps ....

realaqu · #14 07-13-2005, 07:13 PM

Thanks Gary,

I just feel I should do a better work than this one after watching Flora's job. but just dont have any idea to improve it, it looks ok, but it is not indeed.

realaqu

Flora · #15 07-13-2005, 07:31 PM

realaqu,

I think you did a beautiful job! Her skin colour is just great!!

The couple of things I noticed are too strong contrast/shadows ... because of it you lost most details in her hair ....

The skin in her face is partially too smooth/blurred, lacking texture ...

Her left eye is too dark in comparison with the right one ...