Please Help Me By Giving Guidance On How To Remove MANY cracks

ivan watkins · #1 10-07-2007, 12:24 PM

I am in desperate need of guidance from you. By reading this forum I was instructed to purchase the Restoration and Retouching book by Katrin Eismann. I the 2nd edition because I only have photoshop 7. I purchased the books because I felt they would teach me how to restore a particular picture that I've been asked to work on.

I'm completely lost as to how to remove the broken paper texture from this photo. I've read in the damage control section.. even the section that discussed painting with a pattern from an area that is clean. My problem is that this image has NO clean area. It is completely cracked from top to bottom. I've even e-mailed Katrin twice and haven't received a reply.

I'm comfortable with working with levels to help the picture have more contrast but for now I need to get the canvas smoothed out before I really start tweaking things.

Can some please provide me with practical "How To" advice to remove the million white cracked lines from this picture?

Here is the picture that I've been asked to restore...
http://www.ivanwatkins.com/tempftp/a...ns/parents.jpg

I look forward to learning this craft...

Thanks,
Ivan

Swampy · #2 10-07-2007, 01:42 PM

I can't download the picture. Some Photoshop warning about dot gain. What color mode did you save it in?

Cameraken · #3 10-07-2007, 02:44 PM

Hi Ivan

Welcome to Retouch Pro

A rescan on a professional twin light scanner may help a little but failing that the dust and scratches filter removes most of the problem.

Filter > Noise > Dust&Scratches

Radius 20
Threshold 11

These settings work OK

Swampy.
It’s a Greyscale jpg. It downloaded OK.

Ken

ivan watkins · #4 10-07-2007, 03:35 PM

Hi Ken,
I appreciate your quick guidance.. and the settings that you provided did the trick for me... Unfortunately I don't have access to a professional scanner but you've help me tremendously. At first I thought I might have to heal or clone my way through this... and that was a SCARY thought...

Ivan

philbach · #5 10-07-2007, 03:48 PM

I agree. Using a scanner with ICE would help. In this case I used a levels adjustment layer first; then flattened the image.

I then copied the image to a new layer and used darken as the blending mode for this layer. Using the move tool in photoshop I then clicked the up arrow and the side arrow which removed much of the whitish spots

duwayne · #6 10-07-2007, 08:01 PM

Suggestion 1 - I notices the scanned resolution is 1600 dpi. Information content in a photo levels off at about 300 dpi. Above this you don't get very little additional information and very large files and lots of paper texture. I would rescan at 300-600 dpi.

Suggestion 2 - Here a link to a technique I've used on heavily cracked photo if the cracks are raised. Looking closely at the cracks, you see light on one side and dark on the other of each crack. This is because of the off-set between the light source and photo receptors in the scanner. If you rotate the photo 180 degrees and re-scan the light and dark areas around the crack will be reversed. The image information will be the same but the cracks will be different. Here's a link to an earlier RetouchPro thread.

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/inp...ed-photos.html

unimatrix001 · #7 10-07-2007, 08:11 PM

not perfect just a quick 20 run at it. used a median filter set to 7, then used the patch tool to repair remaining large areas of damage. still needs work

ivan watkins · #8 10-08-2007, 05:50 AM

Thanks for the suggestions on the correct DPI setting to use... I will no longer scan in a picture using more than 600 DPI... thanks...

Charlene5 · #9 10-08-2007, 12:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by duwayne

Suggestion 1 - I notices the scanned resolution is 1600 dpi. Information content in a photo levels off at about 300 dpi. Above this you don't get very little additional information and very large files and lots of paper texture. I would rescan at 300-600 dpi.

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/inp...ed-photos.html

I differ with you sir on this one

There are certain restores that are so just plain awful - large cracks, missing bits - that I would much rather have a high dpi scan to work with. My scanner doesn't go above 1200, but I've found it useful with disasters to have that extra real estate to work with. If a high dpi scan turns out to be overkill I just redo it.

MJ

Dave.Cox · #10 10-08-2007, 05:31 PM

I agree with you Charlene. I often scan damaged photos at 1200 ppi. Especially those that were originally taken with old fashion film, but even with digital prints the extra information can sometimes be the difference between seeing how to do a repair rather than having to guess at it. Even though it is true, that you can't see more than 72 ppi on the monitor, or 300 ppi with an average printer, you can indeed zoom in with Photoshop and see the details of the extra information in the pixels. If the extra resolution is not needed, I just reduce the resolution in Photoshop.