picture from @ 1900

[AtlanaAnna]

This is the picture and I am the student. I'm interested in hearing how you would approach restoring this picture. What would you do first?

Thank you,

Sylvia Morris
sylviamorris@nc.rr.com

[Vikki]

The first thing I'd do is explain to the customer that you will not be able to restore the exact likeness to the faces that are completely damaged. If there is not a similiar photo for reference, let the customer know what to expect from your abilities. If that is satisfactory, start cloning, healing, and cleaning.

[AtlanaAnna]

The picture is so dirty that there's no where to really sample and capture and clean area of the sky. I've thought about trying to use the magnetic lasso about the sky area and just fill it with white; then use the healing brush to blend the edges of it into the trees. I have 2 questions. What do you think about that approach? and Why isn't my magnetic lasso tool working? I have the picture mode on RGB.

Thanks,
Sylvia

[twinkissed]

For the sky, I would probably use some cloning over the writing area (if the customer requested the writing to be removed) and then try using dust and descratch filters to remove the noise. Perhaps finish with a very mild guassian blur layer if necessary. I'm not the best at explaining things though. Sorry I don't know about the lasso and why it's not working though. I never use that one.

[Cameraken]

Hi Sylvia.

Rotated and cropped the picture.

Image > adjust Levels
Input Levels 0 1.14 200
Output Levels 0 230

This is a good start and removes a lot of the marks.

The rest will need to be cloned out. I did the trees and the tent but you will need to spend longer on the people.

Ken

[AtlanaAnna]

I'm very impressed with what you did. I followed your steps exactly and now my sky is almost completely cleaned up.

Sylvia

[AtlanaAnna]

If you zoom in on this picture, you can see ridges on various surfaces that look like fingerprints. Could this be fingerprints?

Sylvia

[AtlanaAnna]

If this image is magnified, I can see ridges that look like fingerprints. Could they actually be fingerprints and will software such as NeatImage take care of that? Also, look at the heads of the people on the left side in the back of the group that are next to the tent. I'm concerned that I've cleaned up the white tent around the heads and it may look unnaturally clean and white. I hope this makes sense. Is there a better way to do this?

Thank you,
Sylvia Morris

[AtlanaAnna]

Forgot to attach the image in progress.........

[Cameraken]

Hi Sylvia.

I looked carefully at the original picture and I can’t see any fingerprints, but your post has a lot of jpeg compression so you are probably working on a higher Res picture where you may see something different.

Regarding the tent.

Yes it will look strange if the tent does not match the rest of the picture

If you look carefully at my last picture, I did not clone away everything on the tent.
I cloned the marks out at a lower opacity and deliberately left a few marks in to match the rest of the picture.

Or.
You could clone All the marks out then add back some noise and shading.

Create a new blank layer above your picture
Fill with 50% Gray and set blending mode to hard light
Filter > Noise > Add Noise Amount=4, Gaussian.
Add a layer mask and fill with black

Now you can paint onto the layer mask in white to add the noise where you want it.
When I had done that I faded back the effect to 50% opacity.

You may need to add this to the sky and all the white areas as well.


You could also add some shading.

Create a new blank layer above your picture and using a soft brush about 35 and set at 5% opacity paint on a couple of shadows in black.
I then faded that effect back to 30% opacity.

I have exaggerated the effect here. I would normally have faded them back another 10% (Your Call)


Hope this helps.

Ken

[bart_hickman]

I sort of went overboard here--all in the interest of learning and fun. :-) There was a little bit of many things, but here are some general ideas and the approximate order I did them in:

1. Clone and scratch remove the serious white splotches and scratches. Some of those peoples faces are cloned from elsewhere--maybe overboard for a historical picture.
2. Selected the tent with magic wand and clone-brushed on the tent to get rid of that stain.
3. Noise reduce in selective areas (basically everywhere except the trees)
4. Create a mask for the sky and replaced the sky with something better looking--the white sky makes the picture sort of glary I think (this is probably overboard for a historical photo--if so, then leave this step out.)
5. Kept the handwriting at the top on a separate layer so I could ensure it got preserved--I actually enhanced it a bit.
5. Restored the center-tent pole--low contrast caused it to disappear when I replaced the sky.
6. A bit more blemish and scratch-removing here and there.
7. Selective clarify filter (this might be a PSP only feature--I'm not sure) on the washed-out parts of the trees.

Bart

[AtlanaAnna]

Wow! Lots of good input....... Now to try some of this with my very elementary skills! Bart, I love how you brought out the washed-out trees and managed to better reveal the tent poles. I've been wondering what to do about those trees. Thank you! I will definitely post my end results when I get there so you all can see how I do.

[AtlanaAnna]

Bart,

I really liked what you did with the tent poles but I haven't been able to achieve that so I ended up cloning the one pole that I could see in order to replace the pole that had completely disappeared. However, it doesn't look as nice as what you did. I like the way you did the sky except I would probably prefer it be a little lighter. I tried selecting the sky with the magic wand and chose contiguous but again I wasn't able to accomplish anywhere close to what you accomplished. It appears that you may have rendered clouds. Can you give me a little more detail about what you did on these 2 steps?

Thanks,
Sylvia Morris

[bart_hickman]

Thanks Sylvia!

This is an area where Paintshop Pro (what I used) has some tricky differences from Photoshop. I'll translate as best I can.

For the pole, I just made a rectangular selection and then feathered the selection by 3 pixels in Paintshop (which is 1.5 pixels in Photoshop).

In Paintshop, you'd then do "Selections->Promote Selections to Layer" which puts this feathered selection on a layer by itself. In Photoshop, you do "Layer->New->Layer via copy".

Now you can apply a curve to this new layer to darken the pole. The curve I used looks like the first picture below--the dialog box is essentially the same in both tools. That's how I did the pole.

I'm running out of time at the moment, but for the sky, I'll just say I used a mask derived from a rough selection of the sky area in the photo and then applied that mask to the new sky. Then I applied a curve to that mask and adjusted it so the right amount of sky was showing through while still preserving the non-sky things (primarily the trees). Once you have the mask set up, you can drop in any sky you want. This step was what killed that center pole--so I actually restored the pole AFTER replacing the sky. I'll be back with a better explanation on the sky.

Bart

[AtlanaAnna]

Okay, I think I've got to get the elementary step by step instructions because my interpretation of your instructions may not be quite right. I'm using the Rectangular Marquee Tool and drawing a rectangle around the tent pole. At this point, do I go to Select> Feather> and put 1.5 pixels?? Then I choose Layer >New >Layer via Copy?? When I do that, the rectangle I've drawn around the pole disappears. Is it suppose to do that? And all I have is a blank, transparent layer??

Sylvia

[bart_hickman]

So you correctly selected the pole (see the first attachment). Then feathered the selection with a 1.5pixel radius (also sounded correct.) Then created the new layer. If you turn off the bottom layer, you'll see the feathered pole sitting all by itself on your new layer (should look like the 2nd attachment.) Turn the bottom layer back on, but select the new layer. Then select "Image->adjustments->curves" and adjust the curve to make the pole darker. (see the 3rd attachment.)

Incidentally, there's nothing magical about the 1.5 pixel radius--some other choice might look better.

Bart

[bart_hickman]

The method I used to replace the sky involves a mask based on the image itself. I think knowing how to make and use image-based masks is one of the most useful things you can learn. Here's a link to a basic tutorial in case you're not familiar with it:
http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/AdvancedMasking.mov

So the first thing I did was roughly select the sky (although I was a bit more careful along the tent edge because it's close to the same color as the sky.) The rough selection looked like this:
http://home.comcast.net/~zumbari/Ret..._selection.jpg

Then I created an initial mask based on the luminance of that selection. It looks like this:
http://home.comcast.net/~zumbari/Ret...itial_mask.jpg

Black is opaque, white is transparent, and grey is in-between. The eventual intent is for this mask to be applied to my new sky. Since both the sky and trees are still grey in this mask, the new sky will partially show through both the trees and old sky. I want the trees to completely block the new sky and the old sky to completely disappear and let the new sky show through. So I apply a curve to this mask to enhance the contrast. It now looks like this:
http://home.comcast.net/~zumbari/Ret...with_curve.jpg

It's pretty clear how this mask will work--the black will block the new sky (thus making the original image visible) and the white will be where the new sky shows. Here's what the new sky looks like:
http://home.comcast.net/~zumbari/Ret...p4_new_sky.jpg

Here's how it looks after the mask is applied to it:
http://home.comcast.net/~zumbari/Ret...sky_masked.jpg

Now turn on the original image under the masked sky and you're just about done:
http://home.comcast.net/~zumbari/Ret...d_original.jpg

I apply my repaired tent pole and enhanced handwriting:
http://home.comcast.net/~zumbari/Ret...nd_writing.jpg

Viola! Well, not quite. I'm leaving out some brightness adjustments here and there I did to the sky, but that's a separate topic. I showed these steps because it shows what the mask looks like and how it behaves and I'm not sure what level you're at with masks. However, when I actually did it, I applied the initial mask to the sky and had the original image turned on underneath that first. THEN I adjusted the curve on the mask so I could see my final result changing in real time.

The new sky is actually the easy part (just takes a few minutes). The cloning and scratch-removing is actually far more time-consuming. The cool thing here is once you have the mask, you can drop in another sky almost instantly. Here's a color sky for fun:
http://home.comcast.net/~zumbari/Ret...ferent_sky.jpg

Bart

[AtlanaAnna]

I'm trying to absorb the Russel Brown tutorial. Wow! Now that's the way to make a mask! Right now, I'm stuck trying to understand where both you and he came up with your replacement background. Did you have an image of a nice sky background that you applied. To me it sounds like you're working with 2 different pictures and then merging them into one via layers and masks. If I'm understanding that correctly, then where to I find a nice replacement image to merge with my image?

Thanks,
Sylvia

[AtlanaAnna]

And how do I merge them??

[bart_hickman]

I have my Casio Z750 with me at all times, so if I see a good looking sky, I'll take a picture of it (I believe the sky for your photo came from the parking lot at Home Depot :-)

As for merging, did you see step 3 in my previous post? That was a picture of a mask. It was generated using the same trickery you see in the Russel Brown tutorial. Then you apply that mask to the replacement sky to get the picture in step 5. Then you put the original image on a layer under all that (that's where the merging happens.)

I attached a little picture of how the layer palette will look in PS (I used PSP, but the technique is the same.) Layer 1 has the sky with the mask applied to it. Layer 3 is the original.

Bart

[AtlanaAnna]

I knew my question was a little unclear. Let me try again. How do I get a completely different picture transplanted into a layer pallet of the primary picture I'm working on? Before I can do any of that merging shown in the Russel Brown Tutorial, I have to get the second picture somehow transplanted into the layer pallet. I'm still not sure if my question will make sense to anyone but me......

Sylvia

[bart_hickman]

In photoshop you just open your 1900 image and the cloud image in photoshop, do select all on the cloud image, copy the cloud image, then go to the 1900 image and paste. This will automagically put the cloud image onto another layer (and you'll see it show up in your layers palette.)

It sounds like you need to learn about working with layers--that's even more foundational than masks (which is actually a pretty advanced topic.) I'm sure Photoshop has a great tutorial built into it on using layers (I must confess I'm not really a photoshop expert--I moved over to paintshop pro a few years ago although I make a point of downloading the 30 day trial version of photoshop everytime it gets updated just to see if there's something new I can't live without.)

Bart

[AtlanaAnna]

I'm stuck again. I found a jpeg picture of clouds on the Internet and followed the steps but it's not working for me. After I select all and Copy, I go to my other image and choose Paste but this is where things aren't working right. It seems to paste the image right inside the picture and it creates a transparent layer in my layer pallette but sometimes after I selected Paste, it seemed to just put a transparent layer in my layer pallette and I didn't see the picture itself anywhere.

Sylvia

[bart_hickman]

It really sounds like you need a tutorial on layers in Photoshop. Layers is a huge topic and any good tutorial would probably take an hour or more to be useful, but it'll be worth it.

Bart

[Cameraken]

Sylvia

These may help.

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/index.php?m=show&id=27

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=166

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=63


Ken

[bart_hickman]

Here's a link to a basic tutorial about layers I saw referenced in a thread in the tutorial section. I'm also pretty sure there's something in the photoshop online help. After you learn about layers in general, then you'll want to learn about adjustment layers, and THEN mask layers. To have a complete picture, you'll also want to learn about layer groups and applying masks to layer groups.

Here's your first step which covers the basics of layers, layer blending, and layer linking:
http://www.sketchpad.net/psdlayer1.htm

Bart