Help please with this faded photo

[pambill]

Hi guys
I am very, very new to doing anything to photos - apart from pointing the camera! I would dearly love to preserve this treasured photo but, as you can see, it has been in the sun for too long and, although I have tried my best, I have not been able to get much colour back into it. I would appreciate any help you can give me - along with very clear instructions please! Thanks in advance Pamela Bill

[makeovermagic]

hi pambill,

here's my attempt -- i'm a beginner, but had a lot of fun with this photo; what a beautiful family!!!

i first did a curves and hue adjustment and then masks for color. just playaround -- this was a fairly quick try at it -- as long as you save the original, you can never go wrong. i didn't touch the background.

Marsha

[Swampy]

Looks like there are some twins! :-)

The photo has obviously been in a frame, so I cropped it to the frame area designated by the discoloration.

A couple H/S/L adjustments, and levels.

[pambill]

Well thanks Marsha for taking the time - you have made a better job of it than I did. I think I am frightened of it. I will have a try at what you suggest -thanks Pam

[pambill]

Thank you too Swampy for replying to my post. All the information I am getting is really appreciated. I will try what you suggest too - Pam

[Cameraken]

Hi Pamela
Welcome to RetouchPro.

Your picture is sun faded but the edges are still OK.

along with very clear instructions please!

OK. This is what I did.

1) Select the faded area
2) Add a Levels Adjustment Layer
3) Key in these Numbers

RGB. 58 1.11 255
Red 15 1.19 232
Green 29 0.49 238
Blue 63 0.70 228

This gets the centre and right border close

After that I went on to adjust the borders to match the centre and painted and cloned to match.
Layers set to colour to paint out some of the colour casts.

Hope this helps.

Ken

[pambill]

wow CameraKen that looks like new - thank you so much. I will try and do all that you have said. I didn't realise how bad the photo was until I took it out the frame to clean the glass. I hope I can get it as good as you did. It's the only photo I have of my mother and all her grandchildren (they're not all mine!) If I can get it as good as yours I will make a copy! thanks again Pam

[elless]

One more attempt although not a great one. It all ended up looking quite cold. Best I could do. Lots of very random level, color and curve adjustments that I lost track of I'm afraid.

[rrustic]

I used the crop tool on the faded portion.
I then did a levels adjustment and color balance (I played around with all the sliders until I thought it looked good).
I then adjusted contrast and brightness.
I am a novice at this and thank you for the "practice" image.

Rich

[philbach]

I tried several methods. The method that seemed to give the best color is what I've posted. The bad news is that the result is pixelated.

I cropped the photo to remove the "more normal edges."
I converted to CYMK. Skin color lacked magenta. Yellow Channel very pixelated.
I used apply image. Target Magenta and Source Yellow Channel.

That seemed to give a nice color balance which I then treated with levels.

Ken's method of using levels to each channel gives a much better result as far as pixelation goes I might add.

My method was just another approach to the problem.

[pambill]

Well, thank you all very much for taking the time to help me with this photo. I hope I can make as good a job as you all have - and I will definitely take a copy of it this time. Thanks again Pam

[stofa]

Here is my attempt

1:cropped a little
2:level adjustment in all the channel
3:brightness/contrast adjustment
4:color and tone balance
5:healing and cloning
6:a tiny bit of sharpen

[philbach]

Stofa, welcome to retouch pro. You did a very nice job on this photo. Thanks for posting it.

[familytreephoto]

Time: Approximately 58 minutes

Techniques:
Crop the edges out
Fade Correction 100%
Automatic Color Balance 6148
Automatic Contrast Enhancement -
Bias - Darker
Strength - Normal
Appearance - Normal
Clarify - Strength 5
Automatic Saturation Enhancement
Bias - More Colorful
Strength - Normal
Skintones Present box checked
Edge Preserving Smooth - 5
Red Eye Removal

Duplicate Layer and leave only skin visible
PhotoTune's Skin Tune Filter until it looks right then merge layers
PhotoTune's 20/20 Color MD (I LOVE these filters,very worth the money)
Power Retouche - Soft Focus Filter - Effect Spread 100, Effect 1
Power Retouche - Sharpness Filter - METHOD Smart Sharpen for JPEGS, SHARPEN IMAGE % - 100%, BLUR RADIUS, pixels - .5, FIX EDGES % 80, EXTRA HIGH QUALITY box checked

Then I did PhotoTune's 20/20 Color MD once more to get the final result

If you're interested here's the links to PhotoTune and Power Retouche
http://www.powerretouche.com/
http://www.phototune.com/

*note I had to resize the photo to put it on here

[familytreephoto]

I noticed I ended up with blued hues on the grandma's hair and the blonde girls hair. I fixed this in this manner.

Duplicate layer and get rid of everything except the grandma's head. (it's easier if you turn the visibility of the background off)
Colorize 0/0 and duplicate layer again
Manual color correction - Hair Colors - Ash Gray
Fade this into the BW selection until you get the desired result
Merge visible and erase everything that isn't her hair (it helps if you toggle the visibility of the bg on and off throughout so you don't erase too much or too little)
Turn the visibility of the background on and merge layers

Duplicate layer and erase everything except the blonde's head
Automatic Color Balance to approximately 4000, to add warmer tones to the hair.
Fade using the layer transparency until you get the desired result.

http://www.familytreephotorepair.com/pambill_FTPR.jpg