Photo Restoration - - Overexposed Baby Head (newbie posting)

ziblets · #1 02-08-2007, 06:51 PM

Hi - first I want to say a big Thank You to everyone here. All these years I've just been buying books and trying to figure everything out by myself! RP is just wonderful!
That said, I have this photo I have been trying to fix off-and-on about 2 years. I keep going back to the drawing board. This is a scan of a 30 year old slide photo of a baby. The film was overexposed over the top part of the image and her face. I finally found a book that addressed the problem but when I went to follow the instructions, I didn't have the same options in my software for this particular type of fix

I've come to the conclusion that I just don't know how to work with color channel adjustments, and I hope some of you experts can give me some pointers! I have PSCS and Elements2 (Mac) if that helps. I am also not adverse to desaturating and "hand" colorizing if that's what it takes to get the facial details back. Thanks in advance!

Frank Lopes · #2 02-08-2007, 07:42 PM

Welcome aboard!!!

The photo that you posted is not that easy to fix. It is, however, possible to bring it to a much more acceptable state.

I'm not familiar with the capabilities of Elements2 (Mac).
In Photoshop, you have the ability to manipulate the individual channels: red, green and blue (if you are working in RGB mode which is my guess).

If you look at the individual channels you will see that the blue channel actually retained a lot of detail in the over-exposed area.

One way to fix this photo (I'm sure other more experienced members will have much better ideas :-), will be to copy the blue channel on top of the image as another layer and then work on it with color.

See my example below: the original, the blue channel and the copy of the blue channel on top of the original

Quote:

Originally Posted by ziblets

Hi - first I want to say a big Thank You to everyone here. All these years I've just been buying books and trying to figure everything out by myself! RP is just wonderful!
That said, I have this photo I have been trying to fix off-and-on about 2 years. I keep going back to the drawing board. This is a scan of a 30 year old slide photo of a baby. The film was overexposed over the top part of the image and her face. I finally found a book that addressed the problem but when I went to follow the instructions, I didn't have the same options in my software for this particular type of fix

I've come to the conclusion that I just don't know how to work with color channel adjustments, and I hope some of you experts can give me some pointers! I have PSCS and Elements2 (Mac) if that helps. I am also not adverse to desaturating and "hand" colorizing if that's what it takes to get the facial details back. Thanks in advance!

Lasa · #3 02-08-2007, 08:44 PM

Wow haven't see a noexisting red...so I made a grey scale from the blue channel then used the dodge/burned it to even it out a little...

Lasa

Daviskw · #4 02-08-2007, 08:47 PM

Hi there

I'm afraid I did not have too much luck either

I switched to lab and tried to even luminosity in the lightness channel

Copied the lightness channel then combined it with the original masking the yellow out. Then added color on color layers to the bad areas. There was lots of noise in the face too much to make out much detail. I smoothed with a smudge brush and added some noise back..not good at adding back detail but someone with a little artistic talent could.

Butch

ziblets · #5 02-08-2007, 09:24 PM

You have no idea how excited I am!
I split the photo into two layers, one light and one dark, removed the red and green and softened the edges of each where they meet. Then, I found another slide of the same baby and used free transform to get it more face-forward, resized it, worked it a bit with healing brush and softened the edges. I put this layer on top at 25% opacity and she's really shaping up!
I could really use some pointers on fixing the light/dark edges. When I was trying to use dodge/burn it was only getting darker (yuck). Do I need to make this grey scale channel first, and if so how can I do that?
(I'm so happy I can hardly type!)

ziblets · #6 02-08-2007, 09:26 PM

Actually I guess I could be a little happier if I had saved that with only a blue channel so it would display properly

ziblets · #7 02-08-2007, 09:37 PM

Here it is. I greyscaled the sample.

Frank Lopes · #8 02-08-2007, 10:07 PM

There is hope after all :-)

Quote:

Originally Posted by ziblets

Here it is. I greyscaled the sample.

ziblets · #9 02-08-2007, 10:25 PM

I can't thank you all enough for pointing me in the right direction. I'm going to keep working on cleaning it up.
Thank you, thank you

grannysdc · #10 02-08-2007, 11:29 PM

Looks like you are doing excellent on your way towards solving your problem..

Looks like I am a lil late but here is my feeble quick attempt anyway..

Used a couple hue/saturation layers to go from color to black N white to get as close to each other as possible.. then used history brush multiply and screen to match the top and bottom.. Good Luck!

DCobb · #11 02-09-2007, 01:29 AM

I just wanted to give this a try. My colorization skills are not.

dc

Lasa · #12 02-09-2007, 07:51 AM

If you use the burn use it at 5% or 6% and let it slowly building from the information at hand. The dodge simply lightens but again at 5% and slowying match the shade.

Can you post the picture you got the eyes from?

Lasa

Daviskw · #13 02-09-2007, 09:50 AM

Hi I tried one more from the original post... glad things are working out.

Butch

ziblets · #14 02-09-2007, 05:45 PM

Hi Lasa,
Here is the file from which I got the eyes.

Lasa · #15 02-09-2007, 07:17 PM

That's great..you know you could probably take body from picture 1 and the head from picture 2 and place it on a 3rd background in the middle of a park fairly easy...and have it look pretty good.

Lasa