Restoring photo from very early 1900's...

[carseasoncity]

I'm new to photo restoration. A dear old friend of mine asked me to work on this picture of her parents for her. It was taken in Pilot Knob, Missouri in the early 1900's right before they were wed. I'm in the process of working on it right now, but I'm not sure I have the know how to do it justice. I wanted to post it on here to see what more experienced people could come up with. I'm have lots of difficulty with the faces.
I'll post my attempt soon...
Brandi

[carseasoncity]

Here's my first attempt...any advice?
Thanks!
Brandi

[dataflow]

here is my attempt
i could do a lot more to the face if you could post a higher res image
(you can link to it from a free image hosting site)

what i did was
duplicate original layer
change blending to "Hard light"
then added a "High Pass.." filter to that layer (this brings out detail)
(you can even do that to make it easier to find imperfections)
did some cloning on original layer
then i copied half of the man's hat and pasted it to the other side
then i erased the sky on the High Pass layer (because it brings out to much imperfections in the sky)

and i know that you can see more imperfection in her face but i need a higher res to fix that

as i said above could do more with a bigger image

[0lBaldy]

Do you have a higher resolution?

[cardmnal]

First I would like to say, your off to a good start. It would be great if you would share what you have done so far so others might learn from your techniques.

I will agree with the others that with such a small file (by time we remove the poster board it's mounted on we are probably only dealing with about a 40K file) we are limited in what we can do. But then again you are asking for suggestions not for someone to do the work for you so it's all good.

First I cropped the image and duplicated it 2 times. On the top most layer I used the polygonal lasso to cut the corners off. I then moved and resized the bottom two layers to fill in the corners. I Used the clone tool with a soft brush and low opacity to make these patches seamless. When satisfied I flattened the image.

Next I desaturated the image and using the patch tool and some cloning I cleaned it up a bit.

I then duplicated the layer, set the top layer to multiply (this helped bring out detail), adjusted the opacity down and flattened the image.

Levels adjustment

Duplicated the layer again, this time setting the blending mode to screen, and while ignoring the rest of the photo I adjusted the opacity until I had the background about how I wanted it. Added a layer mask and filled it with black. Using a soft white brush I painted the background back in. This to add depth so the photo doesn't look so flat.

Finally I added a photo filter adjustment layer set to sepia at around 40%

This may sound like a lot but it took only a few minutes and I spent more time typing this than doing the actual work.

I hope you find something here useful.


Alan

[carseasoncity]

I'm not sure if I did this right but here is the full resolution picture to work with. I hope the link works. If not I'll try again.
I do want to learn how to do this myself, but if you want to post your high resolution image I can give them to her to see which one she wants to print.
All I did to my image was curves and levels and then lots of cloning. I didn't think about high pass sharpening, so I'll try that next.
Thanks for the input so far.
Brandi

http://s254.photobucket.com/albums/h...urrent=dot.jpg

[dataflow]

here is result with high res image

not much different from the other just some more cloning on the ladies face.
and 1 step i didnt mention on last post is at the end i

flattened the image then duplicated the layer.
then added a "surface blur" (used surface blur so no detail is lost)
then duplicated the blur layer and changed the first blur layer blending to "darken"
and second blur layer to "lighten"
and changed "opacity" on both to 50%

[carseasoncity]

Originally Posted by dataflow

here is result with high res image

not much different from the other just some more cloning on the ladies face.
and 1 step i didnt mention on last post is at the end i

flattened the image then duplicated the layer.
then added a "surface blur" (used surface blur so no detail is lost)
then duplicated the blur layer and changed the first blur layer blending to "darken"
and second blur layer to "lighten"
and changed "opacity" on both to 50%

Wow! Great work! I'm going to try your suggestions as soon as I get home this evening. Thanks!
Brandi