Photo Restoration - - Restoring a faded arm

jalvarez699 · #1 11-06-2006, 01:47 AM

Ok,

So here I have started to work on the attached photo and have run into a snag. What I have looked for already, was: I did a search on the forums and did not find anything with restoring the faded photo. I will attach the photos both a before and after. Btw, I am using PS CS2.

I do need a little help in figuring out a way to restore the arms and faded hands.

I have the book by Katrin Eismann Photo restoration and retouching, (helped a little)

In the after picture I have duplicated the layer once, set the blend mode to multiply.

Secondly, I have done a levels using the black eyedropper to create a black point while holding down the alt key, and the followed that with doing the same thing for the white point.

Third, I took a curves adjustment layer and set it down a few notches to increase the contrast.

Now I am stumped...

Help!?!?

Thanks!

Justin A.

hotpixels · #2 11-06-2006, 02:22 AM

Hi Justin. You're on the right track. What do you have in store for the finished image? How large will it be printed? Can it be rendered to black and white? Etc.

If you can print it in black and white, I'd be tempted to do that. It'd make a good B&W image. I would consider lifting the family to a new background as well, if that's acceptable.

These would be my initial steps:

Go into the Channels palette and click on the blue channel. Go to Image>Mode>Grayscale. Then return to your RGB/Layers view and then go Image>Mode>RGB. Now stack another layer on the first, in Multiply mode. Do it again, but this time with a Soft Light blend mode.

That's all the help I can give you right now. It's nearly 1:30am here!

JohnnyC · #3 11-06-2006, 08:40 AM

Tough one...

This is a quick a dirty for it...

Basically, selected the area with a feathered selection of 20... then brought down the levels darkening it... The selection was much of the left side...

Then I did this same thing again.. this time just on the arm though bringing it even darker.

This of course messed with the colors on the arm. It wasn't brown and was more of a red/yellow mess. At that point I used selective color to try and match the colors better.

Unfortunately, the picture you posted wasn't very high quality. What I did needs some cleaning up, but at least it got the arm back.

JohnnyC

Liasson · #4 11-06-2006, 10:52 AM

I took your revised copy, lassoed the man's arm, copied and pasted it back onto the picture. color picked the shirt and painted the sleeve. I did the same thing to the hand but put shadow lines on it. I use Photoshop so at this point I saved it as a PSD file. Then saved again as a JPG file. I opened the JPG file and blended the shoulder and the shirt.

jalvarez699 · #5 11-06-2006, 05:31 PM

Thanks for all the tips!

As far as the image goes, I will probably convert it to a black and white, and then colour it. The final size will be 16x20.

One question though, would i use the same technique on the arm on the lower right hand side?

Thanks!

Justin A.

Liasson · #6 11-06-2006, 06:21 PM

With this quality of picture, I would always try to work first on cleaning a black and white copy before coloring it. If you have a good b&w copy, it's always easier to color it. Clean and sharpen the edges first.

Cameraken · #7 11-06-2006, 08:10 PM

Hi Justin
Welcome to RetouchPro.

There is not much colour left but there is a lot of Luminosity.

This image seems to be faded at the edges. (This was probably a deliberate vignette) but the detail can be recovered if you want to.

I split the image to HSL and then repaired the Luminosity.
Adjusted levels on the sat layer
Dust and Scratches on the top right corner
After that I added a layer to colour. I did not spend too long on it because this image is full of JPEG Artefacts.
Neat Image.
You will get much better results from the original file.

The detail in ‘the hand’ is lost (due to the vignette) this will have to be redrawn or copied from another image if you wish to reconstruct it.

If you want more info then just ask

Hope this helps.

Ken.

JohnnyC · #8 11-06-2006, 09:28 PM

>>I split the image to HSL and then repaired the Luminosity.<<

How exactly do you do that?

Thanks!

JohnnyC

Cameraken · #9 11-07-2006, 04:09 AM

Hi Johnny.

Splitting the image into Hue, Saturation and Lightness means that I can work on luminosity separately to the colour.
There are several ways to do this and I guess the same could be done in Lab.
If you wish to learn this stuff then you need to search out posts by Stroker.
Here is how to split the image.
http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=151
http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=152

Or there are plug-ins to help (Thanks again to Stroker)
http://tech-slop.serveit.org/wiki/in...=Extract_HSLum

Hope this helps.

Ken.

jalvarez699 · #10 11-07-2006, 12:38 PM

Wow,

Thank you so very much Cameraken. I didn't even think that i could split the image down. Shows what i know about PS

I will definately give that a shot. I do have one other question, how did you go about colouring it, to keep the different shading?

Thanks!

Justin A.

Cameraken · #11 11-07-2006, 03:11 PM

Hi Justin.

Thanks for your comments.
Attached is the same image before adding any colour. All this colour was salvaged from the original. So as you can see, a lot of the shading is from the original.

From there colour can be added.
Add a blank layer and set its blending mode to color, then just paint away. As I mentioned I did not take too much care with the painting because of the artefacts. A good tutorial on learning to colorize is here http://www.worth1000.com/tutorial.asp?sid=161015

Hope this helps.

Ken

jalvarez699 · #12 11-07-2006, 03:17 PM

thanks again. And you gotta love worth1000! That site is great!

philbach · #13 11-07-2006, 07:43 PM

Well it does appear that the edges are suffering more loss of contrast than the center part. So using a levels or curves adjustment layer with its mask can help solve that problem.

First a levels adjustment layer working on the center portion of the photo. Then use anothr levels adjustment layer to work on the periphery. Use a circule gradient default b&w colors black in the center to white on the edge.

It would be nice to scan this image without creating all of these severe jpg artifacts but at any rate add neat image to decrease the jpg blocking some.

jalvarez699 · #14 11-08-2006, 11:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by philbach

It would be nice to scan this image without creating all of these severe jpg artifacts but at any rate add neat image to decrease the jpg blocking some.

Is there any way to scan it in without those artifacts. The problem that i am having doing that is it is a 16x20 picture, and it doesn't fit on my scanner. If i scan it in sections then it is very hard to reattach them as I have lines of overlap(even using the difference blending mode to ensure that they are lined up 100%) Either way the file size becomes huge!

What did you mean

Quote:

Originally Posted by philbach

but at any rate add neat image to decrease the jpg blocking some.

But any rate Neat image to decrease the jpg blocking some??

Thanks!

Justin A.

JBurt · #15 11-08-2006, 04:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jalvarez699

What did you mean
But any rate Neat image to decrease the jpg blocking some??

http://www.neatimage.com/
A program for cleaning up image noise.

Edit to add: You might want to do a google search for panorama or stitching software. They are good for putting multiple scans of a large image together.