Restoring Picture of Picture, Flash Issue

[rnbluvva]

Hi All,

My father was in England at my Grandmother's a few years ago and he shot a series of images of an image of one of our Ancestors Thomas Huson.

He took a few digital images and recently he asked me if I could get rid of the flash in the image and ready it for printing.

I've done Ok with the image so far except that there is a very bad flash streak in the neck and bottom of the face that I can't seem to fix. Cloning is hard because of the highlights and little data to borrow from. I've looked at the Channels and each one of them has the streaks and I can't use blur as that just kills the whole image because of the graniness I need to match.

Can anyone here suggest some techniques that I might be able to use to get the neck back and fix the bottom of the face?

None of the other shots have the neck in them (all ruined by the flash), so I can't borrow like I did for the shoulder area.

I've attached the working file as it is now (first attachement) the rest are the images I worked from to make the comp.

Any suggestions or tips would be most welcome! Thanks in advance.

[Kraellin]

natalie,

split it out into the HSL channels and look at the lightness channel. that may help a bit.

[DCobb]

I think I was able to remove some of the flash working from your end image. Just fiddled with it and didn't really keep close track of what I did. On the beard I did use the healing brush as on the shirt collar. I finally duplicated the layer and changed the blending mode to multiply. This made the eyes too dark and I used the lasso tool with a 5% feather to each eye separately and then changed the mode to LAB an using curves on the L (Lightness) lightened the eyes. There were several areas on the coat that I had tried the healing brush on and it still looked a little light. So I again used the lasso tool at 5% feather and either lightened or darked the area to blend with the surroundings. I only do this for the fun, not because I am a retoucher; so I hope the experts can tell you really how to do it with a good workflow.

dc

[Gary Richardson]

Hi natalie,

Had a quick go.

Copied image to new layer. Desaturated copy layer.

Copied then reflected rhs of moustache to lhs (as we look at it).

Merged layers. (Not the BG layer).

Selected round beard area and copied to new layer, set blend mode to multiply and adjusted layer opacity to get best look.

Merged layers again (Not BG).

Loose selection round lower face area and adjusted contrast a touch with levels.

New layer, set blend mode to colour. Sampled colour from BG and filled layer using Paint Bucket. Adjusted layer opacity for effect.

[Kraellin]

no time to explain right now...

[rnbluvva]

I finished...

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/cri...tml#post140841