Photo Restore Help Please!

[scifi]

Hi

I have the photo below and can not see how I can restore it in anyway, basically it has a lot of stains and is a little out of focu.

Any help or advice is greatly appreciated

www.scifishows.com/roy1.jpg

[Kraellin]

hi scifi and welcome to RP.

your image is quite restorable. here's roughly how i went:

duplicate background layer
add contrast/brightness adjustment layer
add curves adjustment layer
make new layer group of duplicate and put curves and contrast into it. (didnt have to do this since i copy merged next, but was anticipating something else)

copy merged and paste as new layer

duplicate copy merged layer.

applied 'lum frequecies' to merged
duplicated that layer
added light 'clarify'.
duplicate layer
used 'digital camera noise removal'
duplicate layer

made a selection in the sky of some of the darker areas.
added hue/sat adjustment layer to selection and lightened selection to match lighter sky

repeat the same with selection and hue/sat to reduce the rest of the dark areas.

the rest was all done on a new blank raster layer using clone (use all layers), push (use all layers), airbrush, and paintbrush. this was to get rid of some anamolies in shading, noise, add definition, reduce poor shading and other little things in the image. the whole was sort of a last stage refining.

and that was it. i rarely use 'clone' on the faces any more. the smudging tends to remove delicate features of the face.

what i did i consider to be a minimum job. some more work could be done. the sky could stand some blending work and the pants could use some more definition, but i consider this at least passable.

craig

[Swampy]

A Noise Ninja Pass, some tweaking with levels, Smart Sharpen and select and refill the sky with white. Finally a crop.

[scifi]

Looks great thanks for the help, it is a photo that is one of only one left! So it is very importnat to get the best copy possible

[philbach]

Well I used levels and neat image to increase contrast and remove smudging. Later sharpening. I suspect a process similar to Swampy

[Ziaphra]

A lot of cloning, cleaning up, darkening of the guy on the left. I didn't really do to much to the house because I thought as it is now, it helps to make the 2 friends 'pop'.

[scifi]

Thanks everyone all of yur help is great, if anyone else would like to try please do

Thanks

[Verywierd]

Not really sure if my attempt is any improvement. To be honest, it looks more like a painting than a photo

Basically manual clean up and adjustment of a copy layer and blend. Lost track of how many iterations. Anyway, here it is.

[Kraellin]

here's another revision of this. i ignored the feet on this one. i wanted to show that we dont need clone on this one, at least not in the main portion of the image. this is a matter of shades of gray, contrasts, brightness, and the differences between them. it is not an issue of the type of damage the requires cloning.

tools like shadows/midtones/highlights, brightness/contrast, curves, levels and those types of tools are what's mostly needed here.

now, i did use a tiny bit of 'push' (which is a heavy sort of smudge for you PS folks) right at the end to clean up a very few tranistions and errant pixels, but that was it.

i also used my 32 band gray plugin with various areas selected out and worked on invidividually on separate layers. but even this wouldnt be needed if regions were selected out and worked on on separate layers.

cloning is great tool and i use it often, but it's also destructive. if you select out the various shades and regions and work on those with a shading/brightness/contrast/curves/levels type tool, you wont be destroying features, just altering the shades, ergo, non-destructive.

also, and i didnt do this, but did realize it near the end, this image shld be enlarged before working on it at all. this will help avoid 'the jaggies' that are inevitable in an image like this.

craig

[Kraellin]

and here's a more finished look, combining several different attempts and processes. again, this is mostly a shading and lighting issue. some clone and push was used to fill, alter or patch, but as little as possible.

craig

[Cameraken]

Hi Scifi.
Welcome to RetouchPro.

Not an easy picture. I did loads of selective levels adjustments and then lots of painting. And there is still a lot more that could be done.

Ken.

[scifi]

Hi Everyone

Thanks for all of your help so fr, I showed the attempts at the image to my father in law who is now in his 60's he is the one on the right when he was 16.

He is completely estatic with all of the time and effort that everyone has put in, I look forward to seeing more examples.

Thanks

Again