Newbie in trouble w/1890 photo

[Tamra]

Hi All,

This is my first time posting and I want to thank everyone for all the help I've already received from RP through the advice & tutorials.

I'm trying to restore this picture for my grandmother (it's of her grandparents) and am totally lost.

The orginal (scanned at 600 dpi) is in pretty bad shape to begin with. I've eliminated many (but not all) of the scratches, spots, etc. and repaired the torn parts but have no idea where to go from here.

All advice appreciated!

Tamra

[Frank Lopes]

Any chance you could post somewhere the original?

Originally Posted by Tamra

Hi All,

This is my first time posting and I want to thank everyone for all the help I've already received from RP through the advice & tutorials.

I'm trying to restore this picture for my grandmother (it's of her grandparents) and am totally lost.

The orginal (scanned at 600 dpi) is in pretty bad shape to begin with. I've eliminated many (but not all) of the scratches, spots, etc. and repaired the torn parts but have no idea where to go from here.

All advice appreciated!

Tamra

[Tamra]

Hi Frank,

I've attached a cropped copy of the original, to send the entire picture would require too much compression and reduction of quality. Thanks for your help.

Tamra

[Stacy Cates]

Hi Tamra,

Here's some things I would do:

To darken areas that are too light:
Set the clone tool to multiply mode, softest-edge brush, large brush, about 10% opacity. Then sample and start painting on the exact spot you sampled from. You'll be cloning the image on top of itself, but a darker version of it. Clone over and over to build up the effect.

To get rid of spots that are the wrong color:
One of the many ways you could do it would be to get the paintbrush and set it to Color mode. Sample a color that is the desired color, by option-clicking with the paintbrush on the desired color in the image - to make it the foreground color - then paint over the bad-colored spot. The color will change to the color you want but it will keep the same light and dark values because the paintbrush is in Color mode.

You can set modes for tools in the tool options bar.



Stacy Cates

[philbach]

I looked at your original and noticed that the red channel had less artifact than the blue. So I would start by using a channel mixer adjustment layer using monochrome as the output and the input limited to mosty red and maybe a little green.

To sharpen the almost finished product I would copy the layer and run an Other/HighPass filter on the copied layer using overlay blending mode. Add a layer mask and paint out areas that shouldn't be sharpened.

Later at the very end you can add back sepia color using a HSL adjustment layer if wish.

But Heck your doing fine.