Restoring old Family Photo

[keroger2k]

Hello, I'm very new to Photoshop and I've been trying to restore this photograph for my father of his Father and his grandfather. Orinally (Scan1.JPG) it had tons of yellow stains and scratches, I think I've gotten rid of most of those by:

Image-> Apply Image -> then ligthen with Red & Green and it seemed to take away all of the yellow marks that I believe were originally on the blue channel.

Anway, I'm hoping there are some other things I can to sharpen the image and maybe even some of the details in their faces, but I'm not very hopeful? Can someone just let me know if there is anything else that can be done. I'm really trying to learn, so any information would be greatly appreciated.

thank you in advance,

kyle

[Kraellin]

welcome to RP, kyle.

you did a nice job on straightening and removing the yellow bits. it also looked like you did a bit of cloning to the roof. but in doing so, it got smudged quite a bit and lost a lot of the texture. the image is also in dire need of noise removal. and it needs to be lightened up a bit. those last two are the biggest needs, lightening and noise removal.

i played around with this a bit. i went back to your original image and selected the roof and copy/pasted it back over the duplicate (after rotating the original image 1 degree to the right). i pasted the roof on a blank layer and set it on blend mode of 'luminance'. there was more texture and definition in the original.

i added a brightness/contrast adjustment layer to lighten and add a bit of contrast.

i did some cloning and such on the roof.

i airbrushed on a separate layer some more white in the women's clothing. they looked pretty dingy.

those were the major things. there's always a lot of little fussing around with these that i forget to mention, but they're minor.

oh, and i early on ran a digital camera noise removal on a duplicate layer to reduce the noise. this tends to always be a bit of a compromise between noise reduction and too much smudging/blurring with the noise removal, so be careful there.

all in all you're on your way with what you've done. the roof texture is a minor issue. the yellow was the biggy and you've taken care of that nicely. the next things for you are noise removal and brightness/contrast.

craig

[keroger2k]

wow, that is amazing. I did mess around with the contrast/brightness, but I had no idea what was "correct". Is there a rule of thumb or is it just whatever you think looks correct? As for the noise do I need to have a filter in order to complete this? I'm using photoshop 7 CS and it only allows me to add noise not to remove it.

[Kraellin]

thank you (always love a good 'wow!' ).

the rule of thumb is the same as your other, what looks good. that's really the only criteria in the final analysis. do bear in mind that if you're going to print that you might want to make it a touch brighter on the monitor than what looks right. printers tend to print just a bit darker than what's on the monitor.

i've never used ps7, so i dont know what it has or not. you might try 'Neat Image', however. this is a plugin/stand-alone. if you buy it, it will work as a plugin or stand-alone. if you only get the free version, it only works as a stand-alone. it's a good noise reducer and if you hang around this site, you'll see it mentioned fairly often. you might also try polaroid's dust and scratch remover, but neat image and polaroid d&s tend to do slightly different things. both are good and any retoucher shld have both. just do a google to find either.

i used paint shop pro 10's 'digital camera noise removal' on your image. i find it better than neat image and easier to work with.

craig

[mistermonday]

Kyle, The green channel is actually well balanced and does not contain any of the stains. Try selecting the Green channel and from the Channel context menu select New Channel. When the document dialog box comes up, pull down and select New Document (not new channel). This will give you a new clean grayscale document to work from. Change the mode to Grayscale (Image>Mode>Grayscale). I would apply a small Curve adjustment to brighten the shadows and then proceed to straighten and repair. A noise filter is good if you prefer the effect Craig chose. You can get a free noise filter called Neat Image, just google it.
Regards, Murray
P.S. Welcome to RP!

[rrustic]

As a novice, I need all the practice I can get.
I used the green channel as mistermonday suggested and yes, the stains were gone.
I then cropped the image, cloned the major problems areas, and then lighten/contrast adjustment. I added the brown duotone because I like the look of it on pictures of theis type.

What do you think,
Rich

[Kraellin]

much improved, rrustic! more detail, easier to see, and no longer has that retouched-restored look. well done!

craig

[pepperphoto]

Convert to Lab and then dump the a and b channels?
Then convert back to rgb?
Just curious.
Larry

[blue dog]

Kyle,

I am just in the process of hanging out my shingle . I don't know everything about Photoshop, but I can stongly recommend "Restoration & Retouching" by Katrin Eismann. Work your way through her many hands-on exercises and you'll be well on your way.

Your Green channel is usually your best and broadest channel so don't discard that information. You have both yellow and cyan stains. Here's the method (Katrin's) I used. Use Select>Color Range>Yellow. Layer>New Layer>Hue and Saturation. Set Saturation to -100 on both the RGB and Yellow channels. Set the layer type to Saturation. Now dupilcate the layer using Cntl-J about 25 times (that's what it took me) and the yellow isgone but you have lost any grey scale detail or affected the other channels. Cntl/Alt/Shift E to create a new merged layer. Repeat the process for Cyan.

I 've also corrected the perspective, cropped, and then used the healing brush to fill in missing roof and ground casued by the perspective correction. Finally I used a multiply filler layer to darken the roof and keep the detail.

There's plenty more to be done, but what I did only took 10 minutes.

I LOVE this work! - so don't be shy about asking. I am doing some free restorations in order to build a client base

[klassylady25]

Working with black and white is a matter of vistion as well as skill. The end result is beauty.

1. Resized so details could be seen
2. Added overlay layer
3. Cleaned up sky
4. Brought out the highlights of clothing
5. Finished with Action Frame