Oxidation to photo

[Joramilea]

I have an old photo of my husband's grandmother.
She just passed away and I thought it would be a touching gift for his mother and her 3 sisters to retouch this photo and print it out and frame it in an old fashion frame.

But over the years it seems the photo as become oxidized. My dad thinks this is due to the photo not finishing it's process of . I have other old photos that have the same effect on them.

If you look at the bottom of the photo you will see what I am talking about.

I would love to get this photo looking like it did when it was first printed. She was a very lovely lady and feel the picture should bring out her beauty.

So any other tips/hints you can give me in finishing this photo are most welcome.

This is the photo as it looked before I retouched.
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...andamaorig.jpg

and here is the image after I made some changes.
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...andmafixed.jpg

Thank you for your help

[Peter S]

Not sure exactly what wether you want B&W or Sepia tone so did both.
The damage is easily cleaned up with the Healing brush/Clone and a little noise reduction. Adjusted levels added a gradient map layer for the sepia tone.

[Joramilea]

those are just lovely. I perfer the sepia tone look due to the fact that is what the origional picture looks like.

I keep reading about this healing brush/clone. Or just healing brush alone. Are they one in the same? Cause I use the cloning brush alot.

[printmeister]

My retouch method was to apply a mono channel mixer layer of 70 red, 20 blue, 10 green. Used clone tool to further improve damage. Applied a surface blur mask to face and dress and then brought back detail to eyes, mouth etc. Adjusted opacity of mask so the face didn't look too false. Added some sepia back to image.

Also, (and I hope you don't mind this, being as I don't know this lovely lady's colouring), I tried a colourised version, by adding Curves adjustment layers.

[Littlecoo]

If you use Photoshop you will have a healing brush group in your tools menu (also clone stamp group below it in my attatchment) mighty useful too!
In you image I used the spot healing and standard healing brushes to clean up the worst of the silvering, I found it useful to check each individual colour channel as the oxidation, and some 'splotchiness' in the background, is more apparent on one channel than the others. I adjusted the levels to bring back the contrast and depth to shadows and highlights. I used the burn tool set to a very low exposure (about 5%) and set to shadows, to paint back some of the darker tones that were faded by the silvering there. I didn't really worry too much about any colour wierdness (notably blue toned highlights to rusty shadows) I decided to desaturate the image and introduce a very subtle sepia to give some 'softness' to the overall tone. (used an optikVerve Labs filter for this)

[Cameraken]

Hi Joramilea.

But over the years it seems the photo as become oxidized. My dad thinks this is due to the photo not finishing it's process off. I have other old photos that have the same effect on them

Yes. You are probably correct. The image was probably not fixed or washed fully. Keep it in the dark to prevent further deterioration.


What great timing. I just wrote a tutorial for exactly this type of image.

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=255

After working through the tutorial I used Neat Image

http://www.neatimage.com/

The Results are attached. And like Printmeister I could not help but colour this.


Hope this helps. Great Picture.

Ken.

[duwayne]

I used a fairly standard approach like the other. I ran the photo through Neat Image before I started. This removed most of the "noise". Healing/cloning to eliminate the "silver". This is a very nice photo and I couldn’t stop. I cropped to an 8x10 at 300 ppi. I think there is too much below her face. One more pass through Neat Image (with a very light touch!) and burn tool to darken eyes, mouth, and portions of her hair. Used burn tool on hair highlights. Final sharpening with unsharp mask. I basically kept the same Hue as the original.

[oltenius]

Great job everyone.
I used neat, s/h adjustment, healing brush, dodge and burn.
Dan

[Joramilea]

they are all just lovely! Grandma has never looked so good.

Thank you all for your pictures and what you did to them to make them look better.

I love the colored ones. Grandma did have blue eyes.

[Flora]

Hi,

Joramilea,

welcome to RP!!

A lot of great help for solving your problem... but this was a beautiful picture of a stunning young woman ... sorry to hear she passed away ...

Couldn't resist... working on it.

In my first attachment a plain restoration.

In my second attachment I lightly coloured her eyes only.

Originally Posted by Joramilea

I keep reading about this healing brush/clone. Or just healing brush alone. Are they one in the same? Cause I use the cloning brush alot.

... Clone Tool and Healing Brush are two different things ...

From PS Help File:

The Clone Stamp tool takes a sample of an image, which you can then apply over another image or part of the same image. You can also clone part of one layer over another layer. Each stroke of the tool paints on more of the sample. The Clone Stamp tool is useful for duplicating an object or removing a defect in an image.

The Healing Brush tool lets you correct imperfections, causing them to disappear into the surrounding image. Like the cloning tools, you use the Healing Brush tool to paint with sampled pixels from an image or pattern. However, the Healing Brush tool also matches the texture, lighting, transparency, and shading of the sampled pixels to the pixels being healed. As a result, the repaired pixels blend seamlessly into the rest of the image.

[Steve Conway]

Don't know if this is appropriate or not, but sometimes a sketch can be another way to cover blemishes in older photos.

Steve

[Joramilea]

That is so cool steve. Never thought of using an art filter on the picture. Very creative!

[Steve Conway]

It was a pleasure to work with this image.

She truly was a very attractive lady. I can understand why you want to preserve this photo.

Steve

Steve

Originally Posted by Joramilea

That is so cool steve. Never thought of using an art filter on the picture. Very creative!

[dkcoats]

I couldn't resist colorizing her, either. (It's a nice photograph of a lovely young woman and I need the practice, so what the heck.)

dc

[jaxk]

As a new member I am amazed at the results achieved with digitally enhancing old photo's with PhotoShop ,Paint shop etc.,
Sometimes however the old tried and tested manual methods come out better and some times quicker.
This photos as suggested at first is discoloured because of imperfect fixing in the photo development stage.
The colour is in fact metallic silver that had oxidized'
The way to sort this is to take some metal/silver/jewellery polish on a cotton bud, work a small section let it dry and polish off.

A heavily cracked photo can be healed by soaking in lukewarm water then laying the back down on an absorbent cloth cover the face with grease proof paper and run a warm iron set to a low warm setting over it.

In each case scan and save the image in its original form first as a safety measure.
Then when the above operations are complete finalize by scanning and retouching the 'healed' version.

[Joramilea]

Originally Posted by jaxk

This photos as suggested at first is discoloured because of imperfect fixing in the photo development stage.
The colour is in fact metallic silver that had oxidized'
The way to sort this is to take some metal/silver/jewellery polish on a cotton bud, work a small section let it dry and polish off.

The only problem is I don't have the origional. It was scanned by my husband and his brother with a bunch of other pictures while they were in MO for the funeral of this lovely lady. Due to family problems between the sisters I will probly never get the origional like my mother in-law had hoped.

[Kraellin]

jaxk,

those are good suggestions and i assume they work due to the results that someone said they got when you posted the oxidation one in another thread and they tried it. in fact, i put a link to that thread in the library so it wouldnt get 'lost in the shuffle'.

i would love to hear of any other physical means of restoring photos you, or anyone else, might know. this forum is for restoring and that doesnt mean just digital restores. we've had a number of photos from OPR, for instance, where folks are trying to restore flood damaged images from hurricane Katrina and i have to wonder if some of those wouldnt have been better handled by physical means first and then digital. things like cleaning mud and water damage on the physical print, removing dust before scanning, separating images that have become stuck together and so on would all be welcome here.

[jaxk]

Thank you for that Craig
There are indeed many ways photos can be manipulated manually to bring a measure of health to them -I avoid the word restore - one seldom can get 100%
I shall describe some I have tried from time to time.
First do make a scan as a back up of the item in its damaged state- you can't win 'em all.

Dirt ingrained prints
A print is an emulsion of silver or Chloro Bromide in a gelatin base.When made wet the gelatin swells, becomes soft and is easily physically damaged or has dirt engrained into it.For this try the following make a bath of lukewarm water with a spot of detergent [ very weak wash up liquid] lay the print in it completely immersed and let it soak whilst under water try to ease away the dirt with a very soft brush[Herself's best make up brush perhaps] do not be vigorous, very gently, when you have done lay it back down on a towel to absorb most of the moisture and let it dry naturally.

I'll come back from time to time with other hints and tips

If there is a collection of photos , be prepared to sacrifice one or two to experimentation and gaining individual skills.
Good luck.

[Kraellin]

jaxk,

i made a new thread here in the restoration forum for posting physical solutions to fixing, repairing and restoring. i'd be happy if you'd post some of your knowledge there. it's a 'sticky' thread up at the top of the restoration forum. we are always have folks looking for how to remove photos from glass, how to clean old photos, how to separate photos stuck to each other and so on. a repository of these solutions would be useful.