Bad Patina on old photos

[pallidin]

Attached are two examples of old photos I want to restore. I am new at this and use PSE 4. What proceedure should I use to get rid of the Hazy patina covering these scanned photos? Thanks for any advice.

[mistermonday]

Pallidin, welcome to Retouch Pro. A noise filter plugin such as Noiseware or Neat Image, or Noise Ninja will remove most of the haze. I used Noiseware and Photoshop CS2, however, I believe that these plugins will also function with PS Elements. After that I did a levels adjustment to teak the contrast (1st Attachment) and then converted the image to grayscale (2nd attachment).
Regards, Murray

[yuccaview]

The best thing you can do is to have the originals copied by someone with polarized lights and lens.Does not matter if it is digital or film but the copy will be so good you will see detail you did not know was there.Then you can restore them and have a much easier time with far better results.
What you are seeing is oxidation or silvering and scanners cannot deal with it.If these are your photos you could try a couple of things that sometimes
works in a limited way. You could use a kneeded erasier it is sort of a soft art
erasier, with it you could rub it on the oxidized areas so it dulls the reflective
parts some and then try scanning the results.The other possibilty would be to get yourself some matt spray and spray the print that sometimes helps.Just be
very aware when you do something on top of the original lots of very bad things can happen.The best thing is to have them copied by a pro lab who knows about cross polarization and either get a digital file or a copy print that
has canceled out the oxidation.
Of course if you had software like CS2 you might have limited succes with channels or adjustment layers but still the best way is have them copied.
Don

[Mike]

What Don said......

[solitear]

Hi Pallidin......

I didn't have very good results but here's something you can try:

I did Ctrl + Alt + ~ to select the highlights and Ctrl + J to put them on their own layer and set layer blend mode to Multiply

Then I did Ctrl + Alt + ~ then Ctrl + Shft + I and Ctrl + J to select darks and place them on their own layer and set layer blend mode to Screen (I think I did Ctrl + J on this layer to make another layer exactly like it in order to lighten further)

Then I flattened this by Layers > Flatten Image

Now, Ctrl + J to dup layer and on the duped layer use smudge tool to smooth their faces adj. opacity until content with the look and flatten again.

I then held the Alt button while I clicked the Add Layer Icon on layers palette and made the blend mode Color Dodge.....

With a soft white brush at 10% opacity went over faces, or anything I wanted brightened....... then went Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur to smooth
then adj. opacity of this color dodged layer.

Then held Alt button while I clicked the Add Layer Icon button again but this time changed blend mode to Color Burn....

With soft black brush at 10% opacity went over everything dark, including trees in back and grass and dark clothing...... Gaussian Blurred per above method... adj. opacity and then flattened everything....

Used USM by Filters > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask with these values: 20%, 60.00 amount Threshold 0.......

That's it....... it's a little more distinct but not much....... oh yeah, I also used an Action to change the color to Selenium Brown......

Beth

[Gary Richardson]

Here's another way which can give reasonable results. (I haven't tried to correct the picture in any way, just get rid of the silvering).

Copy to new layer.
Desaturate layer.
New layer, set to color blend. Sample color from BG layer and color layer with bucket tool.
Adjust layer opacity for color, you can also use color balance on this layer to adjust to a tint you like.

You'll still need to correct the differences in luminecense, but the color variation won't be there so it'll be easier.

[klassylady25]

I wanted to see what the changes would look like.

[pallidin]

Thankyou all for your comments/suggestions. I will try them one by one.

[philbach]

I started with the channel mixer selected monochrome and 100% red the least silvered channel.
Then I used a levels adjustment layer.
I copied this result to a new layer using screen blending mode and a black mask and painted in the dark faces to lighten them up.
I then added color back in using a HSL adjustment layer.

[Gary Richardson]

Nice one Phil!

[pallidin]

Originally Posted by philbach

I started with the channel mixer selected monochrome and 100% red the least silvered channel.
Then I used a levels adjustment layer.
I copied this result to a new layer using screen blending mode and a black mask and painted in the dark faces to lighten them up.
I then added color back in using a HSL adjustment layer.

____________________________________
I use Potoshop Elements 4.0. There is no such tool as a channel mixer--or am I missing it.

[philbach]

I don't know what photoshop elements has as far as channels go so I am unable to answer your question.

[sunfly]

Hi all. I've been visiting RP for a few weeks now and have started to do a bit of restoration work. You folks are all so very talented and knowledgeable. This forum is a gold mine.

With this photo:

Smooth up the image in Neat Image.
Retouch some spots.
Take it into Retouch Pro and filter to black and white.
Make a copy and blk/wh filter it again... only darker.
Layer the dark image over the original black and white.
Adjust opacity and use eraser to selectively finish darkening areas.
Flatten, finish any remaining retouches and dupe.
Take the duped copy back into Retouch Pro for a platinum filter.
Adjust the platinum layer to down to 75%.
Flatten.

That is a near as I can recall anyways

[pallidin]

Sunfly:
Your results look pretty good to me. However, I cannot figure out what you did. The following comment:
"Take it into Retouch Pro and filter to black and white." ??
Retouch Pro doesn't have any editing capabilities that I can find.
What do you mean by the above Bit of instruction?
Thanks

[bart_hickman]

The "grandpas family" shot is easily done in Elements:

-duplicate the original (you now have two layers)
-run "reduce noise" on it to smooth out the grain--especially in the shadows/suits
-erase their faces on the noise reduced layer (ensures face details are preserved.) Erase anything else that has important detail to preserve.
-create a new level adjustment layer. Set the blend mode to multiply. This darkens the haze around the edges, but overdarkens the center area.
-Put a radial gradient on the mask for that layer to mask the darkening in the center.

The layer palette is attached (done in CS2, but I confined myself to PSE features) along with final result.

The "dad & bros" shot is easy to do in photoshop, but the inability to extract a color channel and have masks on raster layers in PSE makes it more challenging. For not too many $$$ you can get this fixer-upper for PSE4:

http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Power-P.../dp/078214456X

Anyway, rather than figure out how to do this one in elements, I just did it in CS2 and am attaching the layer palette so that you might figure out a workaround.

-"Red channel" is the red channel which has the least damage.
-"Degrunge" is used to get rid of the dark splotch on the left-hand guy's suit--same principle as byRo's degrunge tutorial.
-"highlight/shadow" lightens the shadows and then I masked it so it only affects the faces
-"levels1" is set to multiply and the levels sliders are shown. This darkens the patina.
-Finished up with USM

Bart

[pallidin]

Bart:
Thanks for the amplification. I will try to replicate what you have done & ordered the book.

[pallidin]

Bart:
I started out trying to follow your instructions but PSE4 will not let me erase the faces from Layer 1 (called background copy) In experimenting I could not figure out a way to erase faces except on the basic layer. Point me in the right direction, please.

[sunfly]

Hi Pallidin,

I was referring to the Power Retouche plugin... the Pro version. I opened the layer with the Power Retouche Pro and applied the black and white filter. Thank you for your compliment.

Cheers


Sunfly:
Your results look pretty good to me. However, I cannot figure out what you did. The following comment:
"Take it into Retouch Pro and filter to black and white." ??
Retouch Pro doesn't have any editing capabilities that I can find.
What do you mean by the above Bit of instruction?
Thanks

[bart_hickman]

Originally Posted by pallidin

Bart:
I started out trying to follow your instructions but PSE4 will not let me erase the faces from Layer 1 (called background copy) In experimenting I could not figure out a way to erase faces except on the basic layer. Point me in the right direction, please.

Are you getting an error message or is it just not doing anything or is it painting a color instead of erasing? Is there a chance the copy layer is locked (little padlock symbol in the layer palette)? Just to be sure, I'm talking about the simple eraser--not the background eraser or magic eraser.

Bart

[jaxk]

This is a non 'digital' method of cleaning up old photos
The 'patina' is in fact metallic silver that was not 'fixed' away in processing the print.
Try this on a corner
Take Silver polish/metal /polish on a cotton bud and gently work a small area in a circular pattern.
Let it dry then polish off.

[pallidin]

Jaxk:
Thanks for the non-digital method of getting rid of the patina. It worked like a charm and is a lot easier than using PSE4 and all its tools.