Photo Restoration - - Tin Type..restoration

suejulene · #1 11-26-2005, 10:14 PM

Hello,
I am new to the forum and to the idea of restoring old photos. I have a number of tintypes from our family. Many of these are from around 1860-1865 based on who they are and when those people lived and, in some cases, fought in the Civil War. Those are certainly interesting.
My need for help though is from a tin type a friend brought me. Most of all, I believe she is really interested in cleaning up the tintype iteslf. I told her that I didn't know how to do that without harming the photo but that I would work on scanning it and coming up with a reasonable print for her home. Any ideas on how to do this would be great. So far I have saved a number of scans and begun to work on curves and which format to work in. B&W looks fairly good, but I am having some trouble with the people's faces.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Suejulene

Panpan · #2 11-27-2005, 01:40 AM

I made a start, but the image is too small, particularly the faces, and there are too many jpeg artefacts.

You could maybe scan the faces separately at high resolution and paste them in after retouching them.

The man's lower body is a guessing game. He's almost certainly wearing a cape. He might be hoding a hat, although I think his hand is resting on his other hand above his crossed leg.

Pierre

suejulene · #3 11-27-2005, 02:30 PM

I appreciate what you have done. I gave the photo back to the lady, but if I need to I am sure she will loan it to me again as she would like to have a print for her home.

Does anyone know anything about how to take care of the original tin types?

Again, thank you.
SueJulene

Kraellin · #4 11-27-2005, 11:48 PM

you'll need a conservator if you're going to clean up the actual original tin-type. not sure where to direct you.... google?

i've worked on tin-types, but i just scan them and restore them. i dont touch the originals. that's a whole other art form.

to start, you want to brighten the image up. so, curves isnt a bad place to start. contrast/brightness is often where i start on these. after that, when i can actually see the image better, then the image tells me what's next to be done. often, it's just a lot of cloning or some noise/dust/scratch removal.

and, welcome to RP!

Craig

edit: oh, and dont work in b&w. it's too limiting. just de-saturate and stay in 16 million color if you want it truly black and white.

Kraellin · #5 11-28-2005, 12:12 AM

ok, i did a little work on this just to get you going.

i doubled the image size to begin with.
duplicated the image on a new layer.
added an adjustment layer of brightness/contrast
added a curves adjustment layer.
did a little clone work on the 'tree' on the left (it's really a backdrop)
did a little clone work on the woman's dress.
did a little push work on the gentleman's face.
duplicated all layers into the clipboard with 'copy merge'
pasted this onto a new layer.
ran the Fast Fix plugin on the image to desaturate and adjust bright and contrast some more.

Craig

the reason i used 'push' instead of clone on the gentleman's face is that i find it easier to use when working on fine detail than the clone. you could also just use the color picker and a normal paint brush. push just saves all that changing of colors.

suejulene · #6 11-30-2005, 04:59 PM

Thank you for allthe help you have both given. I'll keep at it here too...tedious work, but I think it will be worth the effort.

Kraellin · #7 12-01-2005, 12:26 AM

you're welcome, sue.

one thing to note on the background. it's pretty bad off. i really couldnt pull much detail from it. i wouldnt be too afraid to scrap it and replace it completely. if there is enough detail to make something out, why go ahead and save it, but personally, i believe this is an artist's backdrop and it could be replaced with something similar and might save you some work. normally, i dont recommend this as i prefer restorations as restorations, but in this case, there's really not much there to make a restore from.

Craig