Please Help, I have old photo of my grandfather...

[ikn45]

Please Help, I have old photo of my grandfathers’ parents and brothers. Photo in very bad condition: it has very heavy (thick) lines.

Please explain (in detail) how I can repair the photo.

If that is not possible, please direct me to a tutorial that explains the process. I have a Photoshop CS. Thank You, have a wonderful weekend.

[0lBaldy]

A high resolution color scan with all automatic stuff turned off then posted here would certainly help us see the problems..

This tutorial "Restoring an old photograph" by cameraken has become the starting point for most of my projects.

[CJ Swartz]

ikn45, welcome to RetouchPro!

I have no idea of what you mean when you say the photo "has very heavy (thick) lines". It will be much easier for folks to give you some help if you post a copy of your photo. I put a link to some info about posting a photo at the bottom of this post. If you have problems or questions, don't worry about asking for help -- it's easy once you've done it a couple of times, but it can be confusing for folks who haven't done it before -- and we all have been one of those folks sometime in our life.

It will also help if you give us some idea of your experience in using Photoshop CS - are you just beginning or do you know how to use the program tools?

A member here, Cameraken, has posted a tutorial that shows the steps to work with an old photo that requires restoring -- your photo will probably require additional work, but the tutorial gives most photos a good start.

I see Ol Baldy types faster than I do, and we said mostly the same thing.

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=255

[zganie]

AS Olbaldy said Get a good scan,I find most of the time the scan is not great.Its like building a house and the scan is your foundation

[ikn45]

Here is my original photo. I know Photoshop CS little ( only very basic)
Thank You, very much!

[TommyO]

Since you stated you are somewhat new to Photoshop, this photograph will pose some significant challenges for you. It contains a wide variety of some of the more difficult restoration elements: torn paper, heavy texture, ink stains, what appears to be either silvering or an artifact of the scanner introducing a "shine" to the image, and of course a loss of contrast and detail.

So, be prepared to go slowly and learn from this project. Be sure to work on a copy of the original scan, not the scan itself. (You may have to start over once or twice.) Review the tutorial (s) and obtain a book.

You may also consider asking for assistance with only certain aspects of the restoration. Rather than post and asking for help, make a post and ask that only ONE step be done or shown for you. Always post a high resolution "work in progress" image to one of the external free sites as a ".tiff", not a ".jpg".

Good luck with it and let us hear from you !

[duwayne]

When I open the image in Photoshop CS it comes opens in Indexed Color mode. This is a very limited color set and it generally used only for outputting to web. I converted to RGB and then attemped to convert back to Indexed (exact) and it says there are only 43 colors in the whole image. I think you should re-scan to get a RGB or TIFF image with all the color (even if it's a black and white photo) information available in the original. Scan at around 600 pixels per inch. I think this is what's causing the blotchyness of the image. See attached

[ikn45]

I have photo on JPEG image originally, I re-save for outputting to web. unfortunately I do not have original photo (hard copy).
Thank You, very much!))

[dataflow]

you dont need to change it to index format for web.
to post as attachment you do need to reduce the quality and/or image res but you dont need to change format.

and as TommyO said

"post a high resolution "work in progress" image to one of the external free sites"
there is no point changing it to tiff if you only have a jpg scanned.

but it would be better if you could rescan the image at a higher res and save it as tiff.

[0lBaldy]

This Tutorial "Restoring an old photograph"(click here) by cameraken has become the starting point for most of my projects including this one.. When used in conjunction with this tutorial "Enhancing Details In Unevenly Faded Pictures" by Flora.. along with despeckeling a couple times and judicious use of "Neat Image" a noise remover and "Imagenomic" Noiseware also a noise remover..
Below is a quick version using the procedures outlined above..
(despeckling and the noise removal made this photo much more blurry than the original GIF.. Learn from my mistake and do not remove as much as I did.. Sometimes less is more.. try to keep it looking natural)

Take your time, you can do it!
Have fun!

[RokcetScientist]

Originally Posted by ikn45

I have photo on JPEG image originally, I re-save for outputting to web. unfortunately I do not have original photo (hard copy).
Thank You, very much!))

So a new, hi-res scan is out. Then you could post a duplicate file of the best image file you have, per one of the suggested methods, so it can be assessed.

Have fun!

[ikn45]

Thank you very much!!
I will let you know how it gos.