New member, help with restoration

[dolce_man]

Ok here’s my attempt using some of the techniques you’ve all described. I started from scratch with the original image rather than tweak my earlier attempt.

First off, Neat Image rocks, I love what it does. It really makes a huge difference. The demo version only works on an image area of 1024 x 1024 pixels (I think) so I cropped the image and worked mainly on the man’s head and face. I’m not very organized when working in Photoshop as far as labeling layers and keeping track of adjustments as I go so I can’t exactly remember specifics, but basically after cropping the image I applied Neat Image using the default settings and made some channel mixer adjustments. It seemed that the green channel had the least amount of blemishes or artifacts in the face so I mostly used that channel, then I bumped up the contrast a good bit while lowering the brightness a little. I dodged out the background (something I’ve never tried before) and then used the burn tool to darken the hair and fill in parts of the mustache and eyebrows. I wasn’t happy with the results I was getting using the dodge tool to lighten the face, so I resorted mostly to the clone tool set to either lighten or darken to smooth out the differences in shading. I removed the spots and fixed the eyebrow the same way. I also roughly selected the right side of the nose, flipped it and tweaked it to add a little bit of detail on the left side. Just a little shadow really. Lastly I duplicated the layer and set it to Soft Light at 60% for a last bit of highlight/shadow adjustment, and then duplicated the layer again, applied the high pass filter, set the layer to Linear Light, added a layer mask and painted over a few areas for added sharpness. I think that’s about it….

[Kraellin]

dolce, excellent! that's a great improvement and i'm quite happy to see that you followed the first rule of restoration, 'DO NO DAMAGE'.

ok, stage 2: on your current work, you've still got a couple things left to do. his right cheek is a bit blown out. it's a bit too bright. you could burn it darker, use a lighten/darken tool or use a brush. i generally prefer the airbrush. make a new blank layer over your existing ones. take your airbrush and set it to about 3-5 opacity. set the density down below 50. and pick your color/shade from the existing face. pick something slightly darker than what you're going to paint over. you want to shade this area a bit. since you're on a blank layer, nothing you do is going to hard your other layers. if you overspray you can either undo or use a light opacity eraser, like around 5 opacity. the eraser brush is also a good way to just clean up edges that get sprayed that you want to clean up.

once you've got a bit of spray on and things look halfway decent, blur this layer with a gausian blur. doesnt have to be much and depends on how well you've covered the area. so, could be anywhere from 1 to 24 or so. just try a few different settings. this will effectively shadow that side of the face.

next, the shirt is still streaked. you can go several ways on this. you can add noise or paint to smooth this out or you could clone/smudge. either way can be effective.

and lastly, though you may not be ready for this yet if the rest of the image isnt done, i'd do something with the background, a texture, a gradient or even a blurred backdrop type image. this will soften the harshness of all that black and white.

and here you thought you were done

[zekeode]

Had to try this picture too.

PSP Photo XI:

Clarify, Sharpening with large radius, Noise removal and lots of cloning...and then some more cloning. Last part was to add some noise.

[dolce_man]

Hey thanks Craig, and oh yeah, I know I'm far from done with this one ;-) In fact I'll have to start all over again to do the whole image - this is more of a learning experience right now.

Ok I added the shading to the right cheek, and a little to his chin while I was at it. I think it still needs work. As far as the shirt, I did mess with it a little in my previous attempt but all I did was copy it to a new layer and burn the outlines of the collar and tie a bit, then I copied it again, blurred it, set it to Screen and lowered the opacity. It smoothed out the streaks a little and brightened the shirt but you're right, it needs more work. So I tried both of your suggestions.

I copied the shirt again to a new layer and smudged it up real good, then I added a little bit of noise so it matches the rest of the image. I also went back and added a mask to the layer with the burned outlines, filled it with black and then painted just the outlines back in (since I had pretty much smudged them away in the layer below), and while I was at it I added in the collar on the right side since it was pretty much not there at all. That could still be tweaked a little more.

I tried adding a blurred backdrop-type background, not crazy about it but it's better than white.

That's it for now, thanks for the feedback

John

[dolce_man]

zekeode, that looks really good. It's a hell of an image, isn't it? I also like what saby, Phil & Rocco did with it. I think I'm cloning away too much detail with my attempts, I don't know. It's too smooth or something...

[saby]

Originally Posted by dolce_man

...I think I'm cloning away too much detail with my attempts, I don't know. It's too smooth or something...

Hi John,

I think there are more det. on the retouched and desaturated image, good job

saby

[Kraellin]

dolce,

lookin better and better.

his whole right side (camera left) is still quite bright. you could do a mask/selection and add noise or airbrush it.

i'm sorta working along on this also and looking at your posts in psp xi. i ended up masking the entire face and setting this as a selection on a new layer and adding gausian noise, monochrome and then blurring that layer to smooth it a bit. i then changed the noise type and did it again and blurred it again. i also did some erasing on the lighter parts with an eraser brush set at 5 or below. make sure if you go this way that you either mask out the eyes or do a heavy erase over them when you finish the noise and blurring to bring that detail back out.

[jannetie]

Hi dolce man,

I had to have a quick go at your photo too, something about it caught my eye. You've done a great job, as have all the others. I didnt restore so much as give some highlights with dodge-burn, clone and heal brushes, clone out the lines and discoloration/fading on the bottom, painted in a little in white areas and used dissolve on yet other layers to add back texture to some smoothed out spots, desaturated and added back some sepia.

I liked the painterly look of the picture over-all after bringing up the levels, so kept it, but then I'm not trying to do a restoration of family photos. I think that's what I liked best about it (I'm an artist first, photo restorer second). This one has just the look of charcoals I used to enjoy doing.

Janice

[dolce_man]

Good grief, in the last few weeks I haven't had a whole two minutes to spend on this image, so much other stuff going on. Craig and Saby though, thanks for the encouragement. I guess the thing with his right cheek, it seems like there should be more shadow on his left cheek because of the angle of his face, and when I was trying to add it to his right side it just seemed like it was making everything too uniform. Although it could be because I just wasn't doing it right - working with shadows and shading and stuff, I'm not really sure what the heck I'm doing. I don't really have an artist's background, sketching and all that. I'm sure that would come in handy with retouching. Speaking of artists, Janice I like the charcoal look, particularly the one to the right. I suspect this image was originally the result of an artistic rather than a photographic endeavor anyway the more I look at it. One question, how did you use Dissolve to add texture?

[Kraellin]

dolce,

dont worry too much about the right cheek/side, but if you want to try it, take your airbrush tool and set the density way down, like 20 to 30 or so. set the opacity to 5 or less and set your brush size to something a little less than the area you want to cover. i dont know what brush types you have, so just use the default.

with those settings, dont stroke the paint on; dab it. just dab, dab, dab and follow that in a line up the side of his face. it may be hard to see at first and you may have to adjust those settings a bit too. if you stroke it on you'll tend to get a streaky looking thing. what you want is shadow and a bit of a grainy/texture look. it takes some practice, but it's a fairly easy way to get a decent result.