Faded red

[HroadhogD1]

I am trying to restore a old faded photo of a neighbors son when he was in the military. I didnt want to show any faces, because I do not have permission. I cant seem to get the red to come back in the flag. I thought about borrowing a flag, but I cant seem to find one with the yellow rope or fringe. Anybody have any ideas? Thank you.

[Mike Hoffman]

HroadhogD1,

You're right about the red, it is too far gone to bring back. So, try adding some new red of your own.

I used the pen tool to select the stripes, then added a color fill adjustment layer (with the selection active, the layer mask over the stripes is created automatically). I used RGB (80,32,17) and set the blend mode to "linear light," which gave me the best results. A Hue/Sat adjustment layer set to colorize would do almost as well, but I liked the solid color fill better. In hindsight, the pen tool gave me edges that are too crisp, I should have feathered the edges of the selection a bit.

I went ahead and did a rough selection of the blue field around the stars, and added a deep blue fill (27,24,90) set to blend mode of "hue." And I did the tassels with a dark yellow fill (136,135,42) set with blend mode of "color."

I started with "color" blend mode for all three, then cycled through the different blend modes to see which ones looked best.... that's how I ended up with the various blend modes.

[DCobb]

I ran the picture throu a 3rd party filter-Kodak Digital Roc- and painted in the stripes and some of the yellow on the tassels.

dc

[Swampy]

I selected the reds and did a curves then levels adjustment in Photoshop. I didn't do any smoothing or healing, just worked on the color.

[HroadhogD1]

Thank you everybody, I will give these ideas a try and see what I can come up with.

[Daviskw]

Hi there...

Some detail is gone as well... I used various layers...color.. softlight.. and Linear Burn to add back color.

Butch

[vlad682000]

impressive work Daviskw

[HroadhogD1]

Thank you, again you all prove there are many ways to take care of a problem. They all look good. Thank you all very much!