problem with black and withe photo

[jenjen]

I have a big problem with this photo. I thought it would be as easy as adjusting levels and setting a new black and white point, but its not. When i print it out for one the ladies suit is all blotchy along iwth the man's pants. Also the top of his pants and her waist and up is lighter black too. Another problem is that the white especially at the top is all grainy and is like grey or white with black dots on it. The whole thing overall looks crappy when printed. I think i've wasted so much ink all ready. Even though it looks ok on the monitor it still prints out bad.

I scanned it this time at greyscale at 300 dpi. I only increased the size a tad with the resize wizard. Any help i would aprreiate it. Thanks!

[jenjen]

Here is the original.

[Cassidy]

Jen it appears with the photo that if you wind up the contrast too far it fragments quite substantially, I found that I did not get the same amount of contrast however by copying the base layer applying it as a screen and then adjusting the brightness (down quite a bit) and upping the contrast (quite substantiallY), whilst not as bright, it did not fragment until I over revved the contrast

[jenjen]

Cassidy,
Isn't the bottom of the picture too dark then? I tried that and you couldn't tell the difference between the pants and her skirt. Unless i did it wrong. So think my problem is is that i have too much contrast? Thanks for the info!!

[Cassidy]

Agree you do lose some definition however, the main focal point of the photo should be the faces I'd think, the lack of definition in the lower part of the photo should also help with preventing the fragmentation as close inspection shows a light tweedy pattern on the suit and numerous hairs, speckles on the pants

[jenjen]

Does anyone else have any ideas with this one?

[Panpan]

Here's my attempt. There was a lot of dust on the dark clothes. I got rid of some with dust & scratches, but there's still some. I got rid of most of the posterization with dodging, burning and blurring. There doesn't seem to be any detail left near the shoes and on the shirt.

Maybe cleaning the original before rescanning would help?

Pierre

[Cameraken]

Hi jenjen.

I think the problem with printing is because your whites are too white and your blacks are too black. Prints look blown out where there is no ink and printers struggle to get to pure black.

Try reducing your output levels a bit. I think this will help. See attachment.


Ken

[jenjen]

is it wise to use the eyedroppers in the levels adj layer to set the black and white points? IT seems that when i do that that is when there clothes looks funny.

Thanks for your help everyone, i guess that makes sense. I'll give it a try.

[jenjen]

How is this one. I tried a combo of what you guys said. Do you think that would print out right. I did a little tooooo much burning on her dress.

[Kraellin]

jen,

i dont think it's going to look right. on my monitor, i see a lot of very dark in the pants and left skirt and a lot of very light up top. there's also quite a bit of grain showing in places, especially on the faces.

i gave this one a shot also. it turned out to be a lot trickier than i would have imagined. i ran all the standard adjustments with curves, levels, contrast/brightness but it still wouldnt correct right.

so, i made a mask over that bright blown out area on the left, the house part, and darkened it on a gradient.

i ran the whole image thru neat image, but that didnt clean it up enough.

i ran selections on the dark skirt and dark pants and used a median filter on both to clean these.

i ran one very light salt and pepper filter on the whole image

i ran another very light median on the whole.

i then ran the whole image thru the 'one step photo fix' of psp 9. this finally got the levels and contrasts better.

i did some other minor cleanup with push, clone, and smudge in various small areas.

very deceptive image, this one.

Craig

edit: and i still dont really like it

[jenjen]

thanks Kraellin. Your version looks better then mine. I've redone this one over and over. It's funny after awhile it doesn't matter if you get this picture or not but it becomes a challenge.

[Caitlin]

Hi Jen,

It sounds like people are finding this one a bit tricky. I opened your original up in Photoshop and noticed something odd - the levels look like they have already been manipulated in some way. (See attached) Did you have any automatic settings when you scanned the picture?

[Kraellin]

It's funny after awhile it doesn't matter if you get this picture or not but it becomes a challenge.

i start taking them personally after a bit, jen

and yes, cathy, i had wondered about that.

Craig

[jenjen]

HMM i not sure whats going on at this point. When i open up the original and go to Levels it doesn't show it like that. But i got a new printer so i'm not sure. I thought i turned off all the printer corrections.

[jenjen]

Kraellin,


I printed out your picture just to see the difference in the contrast. It seemed very gray and wasn't much difference from the original. Which makes it kind of funny because it looks better on screen then in print. Hmm i give up on it. Thanks everyone.

[Kraellin]

jen,

you may have to make some adjustments in how your printer talks to your computer and photoshop, possibly with new drivers, or by using a different mode. i've seen lots of talk on the site about printing from cmyk instead of rgb. i dont have this problem in psp, but photoshop might need some different profile or mode change or something of that nature. if i run across a specific thread that talks about this i'll post it up here for you.

Craig

[Klaatu Baradda]

Hi Jennifer,
It looks like the problem has more to do with the original scan than it does with Photoshop, the monitor or printing.

The JPEG artifacts are very toublesome. If possible, you should rescan the image and choose to save it as a TIF file. TIF won't give you this blocky arrangement. It gets very noticeable when you lighten or saturate an image like this. Honestly, any image-work you value, JPEG should be the last choice.

Once you have a good scan, Levels, Curves or Shadow/Highlights should easily correct the contrast balance of the image and give you a good print.

[jenjen]

I saved as a Jpeg later when i put it through neat image, beacuse i think that is the only format i can get to open up in that program. Its not the plug-in filter its seperate. Anyway it was saved as a Psd. I just printed out again the same picture i did before and it looked totally different when nothing was done to it. Maybe i got ghost here!

[Kraellin]

jen,

i almost always do neat image images in .bmp and i also only use the stand-alone, so i know .bmp works.

not sure what's going on with your printer, though.

i gave this another shot, only this time i didnt do much cleaning, just trying to get the contrast and levels right. i also didnt bother with the blown out area on the left.

Craig

edit: resized and posted another of the same.

[jenjen]

Oh i didn't know that i could save it under that format. I know i have alot to learn still, but i guess that i what i'm here for.

[Flora]

Hi,

Jennifer,

had a go at your picture using Curves, Levels (Blendings: Multiply, Overlay, Soft Light) and gradients on their Layer Masks since I wanted to bring back details in the faded upper part of the picture without affecting/increasing the shadows in the lower part.

Let me know if you'd like more detailed explanations.

[jenjen]

Flora,

If you don't mind i would like an explaination.

Basically did you added a levels adj layer with a mask and would mask out everything for what you wanted. For example if you wanted her dress darker you added the layer and brushed out everything else? Right? Thanks Flora your a saint!

[Cassidy]

Jen I have subsequently played with that image and found that overlaying a grayscale gradient helps a bit, have a play, damn girl, 6 new ink cartridges is $100, lol

[jenjen]

have a play, damn girl, 6 new ink cartridges is $100,


What's that all about?

[Cameraken]

Hi Jennifer

I did this a couple of days ago and forgot to post it

My first suggestion should have worked but as soon as I noticed it was difficult I started from scratch. You were right that the lower half of this picture is darker than the top and I used gradient masks to correct. The original must be very flat and trying to add contrast back is loosing too much detail.
There is no reason why my attached picture should not print out OK so if it doesn’t you will need to look at printer settings, make sure you are telling your printer to print in black and white and not in colour.


Klaatu
JPEG: Jam Packed (with) Extreme Garbage

So that’s what it means.

Ken

[Kraellin]

good to have you back, flora and wonderful job as usual!

Craig

[Flora]

Hi Jennifer,

thank you for your kindness!!

The following description is only about how I balanced faded upper and darker lower parts of your picture. Here is what I did: (see Attachment)

1. Duplicated the Background.
   
   
2. Created a Curves Adjustment Layer .... without changing anything in the AL itself, I simply changed its Blending to Overlay... The upper faded part started to improve, but the darker lower part got a bit too dark so, I used a linear gradient black to white on the Curves Layer mask.
   
   
3. Duplicated the Curves Layer, changed its Blending to Multiply, reduced its Opacity to 41% and adjusted/changed the gradient on the mask.
   
   
4. Duplicated the 'Multiply' Curves Layer, changed its Blending to Soft Light. re-adjusted the gradient on its mask and lowered its Opacity to 11%.
   
   
5. The resulting image was balanced but somehow flat and darkish, so I created a further Curves Adjustment Layer to add just enough contrast to have a better basis for the rest of the restoration...

After that, I used Dust&Scratches to clean the picture, Neat Image (very soft to not completely remove the pattern on the skirt and jacket of the woman on the left.)

I worked with Luminosity and Shadow Masks to furhter enhance the image and, finally I applied a soft Sepia Tone to the shadows only.

Hope this helps...

Craig,

thank you so much for your kindness and warm welcome back!!!

[jenjen]

Thanks for the help Flora. I'll try it that way once. You make it sound easy!