Beating back the hands of time

[Blindv]

I was recently asked to go over a series of old wedding pictures for a 50th wedding anniversary for a friend, and thought I'd see about some feedback from ya'll on what I could be doing different to improve. And incase you're wondering, the suit was actually THAT blue lol. Thanks in advance for taking the time.

http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/e...enesis/20A.jpg
http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/e...enesis/20B.jpg

http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/e...s/scan0039.jpg
http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/e...an0039copy.jpg

[Graphics23]

Since you've asked for feedback, here's my take:

I think you've gone a little too far with the colors. The picture looks over saturated and you're loosing detail in the shadows and highlights. The faces look very flat and I really don't think the suit is that vibrant.

I did some basic color correction using curves, then I improved detail by blending the Green channel into the Blue in lighten mode at 30% opacity.

I did not do any repair work other than noted above, but I was able to bring out quite a bit more detail without sharpening and the colors look more natural to me. Notice in particular how much more shape there is in the faces and how much clearer the details are in the background.

This is by no means a finished restoration, but it should give you an idea of what can be done to further improve these images.

Regards,

Michael

[mistermonday]

There is a fair amount of aging both in the blue and red channels. There are many approaches but for the type of shift here a Curve adjustment resetting the B&W points is probably the emost effective. However, the image has a fair amount of color noise. So before attempting any curve or level adj, I would run a noise filter (I used Noiseware). I have many photos like these and I think your blue suit is off color for even for that period. If nothing else it is too saturated.
Regards, Murray

[chillin]

I think the pants color should be something between Graphics23 & mistermonday.
bdw mistermonday nice "Noiseware" work

[Blindv]

Basically what I've been doing is adjusting the color balance for shadows, mids, highlights for the entire image, and then using a mid opacity brush in color mode to recolor the image; I agree it all sounds pretty barbaric

Thanks for the feedback all, I'll keep tinkering!

[Alison]

Hi Blindv,

Here are my two efforts at the images. First stop for me was a levels adjustment layer and I corrected the individual channels. I ran both images through neat image and used a curves adjustment layer to finish off. Did only slight cleaning up on both images.

[Kraellin]

blindv,

in your first set, the thing that sticks out most is the skin tones are too yellow.

in the 2nd set, the shadows on the skin of the two men on the left look splotchy. those on the right look fine.

[Oh_Heck]

This is what I got with this one. I didn't do any noise reduction or fixes like that yet. Just wanted to see where I would end up with the colors. Now the blues, etc haven't been tampered with, meaning after reducing the obvious red/yellow tones, these are the blue and skin tones I was left with. So I don't think there is much need to artificially color the clothing, cause the base colors are still there...just gotta squeeze them out using curves, etc.

[Kraellin]

looks very good, oh heck.

[unimatrix001]

gave this a quick try noiseware to reduce noise, duplicated layer, filter blur average, invert layer blending to overlay, levels to adjust each channel. came up with this