Repair of Scanned Slide

[Jim Frazer]

Hi,

The attached image is from a slide that I scanned. The image is of my son and it was taken about 38 years ago. Somewhere in its past, something was spilled on it. I'd love to hear some thoughts on how to restore it. Some time back I tried the clone brush but the result was not good.

Thanks,
Jim

[HroadhogD1]

Hi, Didnt have much time to work on this photo, maybe I can get back on later, But I did get the purple out. hope this might help.

[CJ Swartz]

Jim, do you use Photoshop or Adobe Elements or PSP or what?

In Photoshop 7, I made a selection of your son's magenta skin and then used a Selective Color adjustment layer to reduce the magenta and increase the cyan in the Red option box. You can get pretty close to his skin color and then you can clean up with cloning, Healing and/or Patch tools. I just did enough clean-up to see that it could work. You could also convert the image to black/white and do cloning to clean up the spotted areas without having to worry as much about the color correction matching.

I read that you've been doing retouching for years, but have recently converted to digital. Let me know if you need info about my technique. I'm not versed in Elements or PSP, so don't know which tools in those programs would work like Selective Color. Welcome to RetouchPro!

[Jim Frazer]

Hi C.J.

I have Photoshop CS2, Elements 4.0 and Paint Shop Pro XI. I'm most familiar with the latter 2 but am working on getting my arms around CS2. I've been doing a lot of digital photography and a fair amount of retouching - more in black & white than color. This is one I did some work on a couple of years back but was reminded of it when I saw my son this weekend. Thanks for the idea. I'll give it a shot when I get some time.

Jim

[mistermonday]

Jim, there are many ways to attacking this image. However, the stain is large so the clone tool would not be my first choice. The other challenge is that the stain is darker than the rest of the face.
Examination of the individual channels holds a solution though. You will see that the stain is very prominent in the G and B channels. There is damage in the red but the luminosity of the R is very uniform. So here is what I did.

Duplicate the background to a new layer. With that layer active, go Image>Apply Image. From the dialog window, select the background layer as the source and the R channel. Make sure the blend mode is set to Normal 100% and click OK. You will end up with a Grayscale layer. Now change the Blend Mode of that layer to Luminosity. The result is attachment 1 below. The stain is still there but its brightness is the same as the rest of the face. BTW, the overall image is a little lighter than the original. If you find it too light, just do a levels adjust and pull the shadow slider a small amount to the right and you'll darken the image exactly as it was.

Now to get rid of the stain. Add a blank layer above the image and set its blend mode to color. Select a suitable soft brush set to sample all layers and lower its opacity to 80%. Use the Alt key to sample an area of normal color skin very close to the stain and release the Alt key and brush over the stain. Take a number of samples around the adjacent areas as you paint the stain out of the face and hair. It should just take a few short minutes.

Now you are left with all those spots. These can be eliminated with a combination of Healing Brush and Clone tool. I just did a little of the boy's cheek to demonstrate.
When you are done, you may need to run a noise filter on the final image to clean up any remaining noise - but you will need to see when you get there.
Good luck with the restoration.
Regards, Murray

[Jim Frazer]

Hi Murray,

Thanks for the ideas. I understand what you are describing. I don't have too much spare time right now but will definitely try what you suggest. I'm pretty comfortable with getting rid of the smaller speckles.

Jim

[DCobb]

Fixing this type of problem is something that I have never been able to do successfully. The posts by C J Swartz, and mistermonday (Murry) have been most helpful and I wish to express my appreciation. Did I make it half way into the ballpark?

dc

[Ziaphra]

I have PSPv9 which I am sure has the same brushes as XI. I used the 'change to target' brush to repair the colours here...done very quickly as an example.

[Jim Frazer]

Hi dc,

Offhand I'd say you knocked it out of the ballpark! Nice job.

Ziaphra, I'll have a look to see of PSP XI has that same feature.

With the help offered here I'm sure I can get this image cleaned up. Thanks to all.

[Cameraken]

Hi Jim.

Some time ago there was a pdf file available from Russell Brown called RBStains. The tutorial was perfect for this type of damage. Unfortunately I can no longer find it on the web.

I wonder if I could use your picture for a tutorial on the repair?

Or (better still) if you upload the image to our archive. There is a thread to help here
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/web...hlight=archive

Ken.

[Jim Frazer]

Hi Ken,

You are welcome to use this for a tutorial. I'll have a look at how to upload the original image. It is in .tif format - will that be OK?

Jim

[Cameraken]

Hi Jim.

Thanks You.

There is No Filesize Limit if you upload it to the Archive. So a Tiff file would be great. I have posted instructions on how to upload the image at the link above.

I will post back in this thread when the tutorial is finished.

Thanks Again.

Ken.

[pierresplace]

Hi,
I'd like a chance to work on this with your permission? Thanks.
...pierresplace...

[Jim Frazer]

Hi Ken,

I think I uploaded the image properly, though I did it twice. I didn't see the "Pending Approval" sentence until I did the second upload. I look forward to the tutorial.

PierresPlace,

You are welcome to give it a go. I am the photographer and my son is the subject and has agreed to my posting. He looks a bit different now since he's 39!

Thanks,
Jim

[pierresplace]

Thanks,
I'll get back to you.
Best Regards,
...pierresplace...