Photo Restoration - - help with shadows

msfrigyfrog · #1 04-02-2006, 09:16 PM

this is one of my favorite photos of my daughter but as you can see her face is totally shadowed by her hat. i have tried all i know ( which is very little ) to remove the shadows so i can see her face and have had no success. the photo is grainy and generally not good quality because the camera was crap ( i have since fixed that problem lol ) but still one of my favs so i would like to have it fixed. if anyone could fix it and/or tell me how i would be forever grateful.

mistermonday · #2 04-02-2006, 10:55 PM

It's late and I only had a few minutes to work on this. The image has very strong jpg artifacts. A larger size file or one that is not so compressed would improve the results greatly. There is not a lot of detail left around the eyes.
I applied the red channel to the image in screen mode and worked from there.
Applied a noise filter to reduce the jpg artifacts. From here I would correct the shifted colors and saturation. Another photo of her could be used to clone in fresh eyes. I may be able to play with it tomorrow night.
Regards, Murray

Verywierd · #3 04-03-2006, 04:45 AM

Here's a quick one. I left a lot of the jpeg artifacts in as I was trying to retain as much detail as possible and I did not have access to my tablet. I am sure that others will do a more polished job

creeduk · #4 04-03-2006, 07:10 AM

I was suprised you found as much detail as you did under that hat VW. Problem with deep shadow is the extent of detail loss. If you have other images of the same girl you could reconstruct this one easier than saving it I think.

Verywierd · #5 04-03-2006, 07:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by creeduk

I was suprised you found as much detail as you did under that hat VW. Problem with deep shadow is the extent of detail loss. If you have other images of the same girl you could reconstruct this one easier than saving it I think.

A lot of it was guesswork and squinting a lot to extrapolate lines when fixing the jpeg compression damage

Other images of her would certainly help.

philbach · #6 04-03-2006, 08:13 AM

Well like everyone else, the jpeg artifacts and blue channel artifacts were a major nuisance.

I used neat image on the blue channel and later on the whole image and used shadow highlight adjustments x 2 with masking.

msfrigyfrog · #7 04-03-2006, 09:55 AM

omg you guys are all great i couldnt come up with anything and being a novice with photoshop still i have no clue what you told me you did but i thank you !

Ziaphra · #8 04-03-2006, 10:34 AM

I hope you guys don't mind but I combined philbach's and Veryweird's pix and googled some eyes to get this.

Frank Lopes · #9 04-03-2006, 12:57 PM

Msfrigyfrog, could you post a higher resolution image?

Quote:

Originally Posted by msfrigyfrog

this is one of my favorite photos of my daughter but as you can see her face is totally shadowed by her hat. i have tried all i know ( which ... be forever grateful.

msfrigyfrog · #10 04-03-2006, 01:01 PM

i wish i could but the camera used wasnt a good one this is all i have??? is there a way to make it better?

Frank Lopes · #11 04-03-2006, 01:02 PM

Are you saying this was directly from the camera?

Quote:

Originally Posted by msfrigyfrog

i wish i could but the camera used wasnt a good one this is all i have??? is there a way to make it better?

Cameraken · #12 04-03-2006, 03:06 PM

Is she wearing glasses?

Ken

Verywierd · #13 04-03-2006, 07:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ziaphra

I hope you guys don't mind but I combined philbach's and Veryweird's pix and googled some eyes to get this.

That looks very good.

msfrigyfrog · #14 04-04-2006, 12:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by msfrigyfrog

i wish i could but the camera used wasnt a good one this is all i have??? is there a way to make it better?

well at the time i had a sony floppy disk camera and yes the photo was taken on a floppy and then uploaded and saved on pc its the best i have unless there is some way to make it better

Kraellin · #15 04-04-2006, 01:20 AM

had a go at this. too tired to explain it all now. had to compromise some things to find and restore the eyes, but those other things could be corrected now. i'm just out of time for tonight. suffice it to say it was a long, convoluted process involving things like 'arithmetic', cmyk splits, hsl splits, and rgb splits. tons of layers and lots of hand work. there was noise correction and black and white points. i even experimented a bit with my 32 band gray plugin. all in all, i think i found the eyes. not sure if they were really green, but i liked green, so that's what they became

craig