picture from @ 1900

AtlanaAnna · #1 11-11-2005, 10:07 PM

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 · #2 11-12-2005, 06:30 AM

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 · #3 11-12-2005, 11:59 AM

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 · #4 11-12-2005, 01:16 PM

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 · #5 11-12-2005, 03:32 PM

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 · #6 11-12-2005, 09:50 PM

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

Sylvia

AtlanaAnna · #7 11-13-2005, 12:22 PM

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

Sylvia

AtlanaAnna · #8 11-14-2005, 07:06 AM

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 · #9 11-14-2005, 07:11 AM

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

Cameraken · #10 11-14-2005, 06:32 PM

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 · #11 11-14-2005, 09:56 PM

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 Paint Shop Pro only feature--I'm not sure) on the washed-out parts of the trees.

Bart

AtlanaAnna · #12 11-14-2005, 11:26 PM

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 · #13 11-16-2005, 06:50 AM

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 · #14 11-16-2005, 08:24 AM

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 · #15 11-16-2005, 06:41 PM

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