Stymied: How can I bring this back

[blue dog]

This is an actual work piece. Thank goodness the others were more the standard fare. Its frustrating to be able to "see" through the fog but not be able to defog it. Any suggestions other than local dodge and burn??

This is actually a remixed image from a color scan. The 'fog' is the re-silverization of the image and shows very strong in the blue channel. So this is a remix of all the red channel and some green.

[DCobb]

This was my take on the picture. I used the burn tool with a soft brush at 12%. For the hand I reversed and used the dodge tool at 10%. This may not even be close to the type for which you are looking. I do this type of work just for the fun of it and hopefully one of the more experienced members will be able to provide better you will a better solution. What I did, I did in a relatively short period of time and probably the real fix requires a longer, more labor intensive work. Another thought, If you had another picture with an acceptable period background you might be able to cut her from this and paste to the new background. The dress being dark would burn easily without hurting the polka dots.

dc

[blue dog]

Thanks dc. I should have been more explicit. Burn and Dodge I know. I am pretty well versed in PS CS. I was looking for a more global technique and I even tried a couple that I just made up like using the illumination copy as a mask for levels, curves, contrast & brightness adjustments. Its not clear that there is anything there, doesn't look promising.

Sometimes people here no some pretty amazing techniques so I ask.

[CharlesBell]

How is this?

[unimatrix001]

dont remember exactly what i did. messed with this alot and did several different things. i believe the finished picture which i only worked on the fog as you called it was this
levels
selective color and adjusted the blacks and neutrals
image>adjustments>variations
hope this is helpful

[Vikki]

It's always a good idea to post the original along with your reworked version.
Because you're only posting the image you've already adjusted, you're missing out on techniques that might better handle the problem if applied to the original color image. For instance, combining the two channels (settings not mentioned) may not be the best way to go.

[blue dog]

Originally Posted by Vikki

It's always a good idea to post the original along with your reworked version.
you're missing out on techniques that might better handle the problem

You are right, or course, here's the original with all three channels.

[Mike]

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/pho...uble+polorized

Check out post #8 for an example of the technique. Further along is an explanation of it.

[blue dog]

that's it Mike. The engineer in me 'knew' that there was something I was missing, a way to remove that sheen globally. Now all I have to do is go spend about 10x what I am getting paid for this on a light and polarizer. Oh well, It will pay for itself in the long run, eventually......

PS: Somewhere, probably here, I heard of using that same technique to remove the texture from highly texture photos.

[Mike]

Or perhaps you might find a studio with the proper equipment and knowledge to make a file for you? I do things like that all the time for other folks, but I see we are not too close.

[CJ Swartz]

Hope you can get the image copied under suitable lighting.

I did try some channel calculations which helped a little but didn't solve the problem. Then I found that Ro's de-grunge technique helps noticeably although certainly not a fix. Depending on the results of the copying, you might find the de-grunge step helpful.

I found her rather intriguing, so I worked on her for a while with dodge/burn overlay layers, patch tool etc. after the degrunging.

[lkroll]

Used Retinex clarification for the fog removal (Retinex set to Overlay).

[chillin]

I’ve erased some of the darker smudge, to be able to focus on other valid details.

[Kraellin]

blue dog,

i can see why you're stymied on this one. it's a VERY difficult image. as you can see from the various attempts, it's not an easy fix. this is one of those that you can basically throw away the filters and quick fixes. they just arent going to come up to snuff. roll up your sleeves, zoom in, and get out the clone/heal type tools with a small size and medium to low opacity.

you can use a few quick things to help, like curves, levels, brightness/contrast, shadows/midtones/highlights, and clarify, but for the most part you're going to have to do a LOT of meticulous work to really restore this one.

mike's technique of double polarization might well work here, at least for part of it and his suggestion of finding a lab to do the job might be smart also. but, short of that, it's going to take some good old fashioned hand work to fix this one.

i'm currently working on this one as well, but i'm leaving to visit friends for the holiday, so, i probably wont post anything till i get back.

[bart_hickman]

The big difficulty with this one (IMO), is what appears to be wrinkling in the photo right across the subject. The wrinkling mixes indistinguishably with the folds in the clothing.

Enough griping here's what I did:

First step is to equalize what looks like dodging around her face and elsewhere. Made two monochrome versions. The first version is simply the luminosity (use channel mixer, and set coefficients to R,G,B = 31,58,11). The 2nd version is the blue channel. The blue channel looks better in the dodged areas, but no so good elsewhere. So I put a black mask on the 2nd version and painted softwhite in the areas that are too bright. This doesn't totally fix the problem, but it makes the best use of the information that's available.

2nd step is get rid of the folds/creases around her shirt. Created an inverse B&W mask which protects all those buttons. Then I can heal/clone somewhat sloppily to get rid of the folds without worrying about hurting the buttons.

3rd step is a masked curve to remove the rest of the dodging problem. Could have done this as the 2nd step--doesn't matter.

4th step is a couple of sharpenings to give the image more pop.

5th step is some final healing and speck removal.

I didn't do a complete job--just a quick and partial version of each step. There's still a lot of smaller cloudiness that requires some time-consuming work (some folks like dodging and burning, I prefer using a curve with a mask).

Bart