Advice on retouching badly damaged photo?

[jasosmith]

Hi Guys - I am trying to restore this photo for my fiancees uncles Birthday this weekend. The biggest problem I see is the large shiny grainy chunks all over it. I took information from the red channell of the initial scan as it seemd to have the least problems. There doesnt seem to be any real areas of good information to sample from. I am after some advice on how to approach this one.

[Oh_Heck]

Personally, I would replace the background entirely. Maybe keep the fence, extend it further across the background, throw some blurred shubbery, etc back there. Its an area in shadow so that shouldn't be to hard to pull off.

[Alison]

Hi,

The crop tool will do a lot of work for you here. I've attached a really quick example (just got home from a meeting ... need sleep )

I duplicated the background layer, and with the healing brush set to pattern used the 'kraft paper' from the grayscale papers. Just brush over the fence, not all at once, let the brush do its work in reasonably small amounts. It will pick up the lighter colours if you get too close to Gerald. You can put some shrubbery back in along the fence line if you want, but to me the focus is on the man.

It still needs some work, but it gives a good base to clone or heal from - which I haven't done much of on the image itself

[jasosmith]

Thanks guys - that gives me some direction. Alison - where did you find the 'Kraft Paper' in Photoshop. Could you expand a little on what you did with the background. Cheers

[chillin]

I would preserve the background, it makes the picture interesting.
I would simply fix the cracks, dodge & burn the background, run some noise filter selectively & some sharpening (selectively). At the end I would correct the B&W tone.

[Alison]

Originally Posted by jasosmith

Thanks guys - that gives me some direction. Alison - where did you find the 'Kraft Paper' in Photoshop. Could you expand a little on what you did with the background. Cheers

Hi Jaso,

If you select the healing brush, look at the top bar where the brush size, source, destination settings are and you will notice a check box for pattern. Select that and then open the pattern box, you will then have to used the little arrow to open the available patterns. In the bottom third you will find 'grayscale' click that and click the append button when the dialogue box asks you want you want to do. Use the original pattern box again, and I think the Kraft Paper is near the end - just hold your cursor over the patterns and it will tell you the name - select Kraft Paper. Make sure that you have dupicated the original layer and simply brush over the background. It works exactly the same as when you use the healing brush set to sampled, only you are usually the pattern, in this case the Kraft Paper.

I brushed over the background with the healing brush, doing perhaps an inch or less at a time. It can be very effective in some situations, if you are prepared to lose the fence palings in this instance then it will work really well.

Hope that helps

[Kraellin]

i had a go with your pic too, jaso.

i started with desaturating the image using hue/sat. also ran a levels and curves on it.

after that it was mostly cloning and airbrushing and push (smudging) to get all that cracking out.

from there the light balance was still off. so, i ran a brightness contrast layer and lowered the contrast a bit. ran another curves and then ran a histogram adjustment.

those type adjustments always tend to bring out a little more noise, so it was more clone and push and airbrush.

i finally finished it off with usm treatment of 2/100/5.

[Alison]

Hi Kraellin,

I don't know if it is just the jpeg compression, but on my monitor there is lots of weird stuff going on with the fence.

[Oh_Heck]

Keep in mind folks, that 'noise' you see in the background is not supposed to be there. The fence you can just make out, but the rest of that is from the scanner hitting a non planar surface, and it's picking up some texture from the photograph itself.

[chillin]

I would think that there are some bushes behind too.

[jasosmith]

Thanks guys for your help - I am also going to try making a digital photograph of the image with a diffuse light source as set out in Katrins book to see if I can get rid of some of that terrible reflection.

[Kraellin]

alison, you talking about on the left side of the image or the right? i think the right is like oh heck says, it's a noise/damage thing. it could probably just be blacked out and be fine or maybe dub some dark shrubbery in there.

[Alison]

Originally Posted by Kraellin

alison, you talking about on the left side of the image or the right? i think the right is like oh heck says, it's a noise/damage thing. it could probably just be blacked out and be fine or maybe dub some dark shrubbery in there.

Hi Kraellin,

I see it on both sides of man. You are probably correct that it is damage to the original photo.

[jasosmith]

Alison
What size brush do you use for painting the background. I am using around 200 pixel size. Do you use any particular brush stroke (full length / up down etc). The Healing Brush does a fair job of getting rid of the dimpled background however gets a little tricky near the line of the grass, and the outline of gerald.

[Alison]

Originally Posted by jasosmith

Alison
What size brush do you use for painting the background. I am using around 200 pixel size. Do you use any particular brush stroke (full length / up down etc). The Healing Brush does a fair job of getting rid of the dimpled background however gets a little tricky near the line of the grass, and the outline of gerald.

Hi Jaso,

Sorry its taken me a while to get back to you. I probably used a 100 pixel brush on the background, if you have the original larger image you could go bigger. I didn't use any particular brushstroke on the image, but I would probably go in an up and down stroke to match the wood. You will have to use the clone brush along the grass line and around Gerald.