Need advice on a crackled picture

[tawnidilly]

Hi,
I have a picture where almost every square inch is crackled. I dont even know where to start. It was an emailed image and I printed it out at high resolution and scanned it with all settings off and turned it and scanned it again to see if that helped. I did not see a difference. I have no clean areas to work with and trying to reproduct the crackle is pretty close to impossible.
I just don't see how I could clone much of anything. I know I could soften it and possibly remove some noise, but I would love some input and advice.
Thank you & Happy Holidays,
Tawnidilly

http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z...mom69/fred.jpg
http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z...m69/img214.jpg (Scanned and digital ice)

[TommyO]

Search the forums for the decrack action, download it, install it and try it out. Your cracks are so small and uniform, it may work very well.

[tawnidilly]

Originally Posted by TommyO

Search the forums for the decrack action, download it, install it and try it out. Your cracks are so small and uniform, it may work very well.

Thank you!
Im going to look for it now. I'll post any results.
Thanks again,
Tawnidilly

[Kraellin]

you might get some results from FFT, also. that crackling is almost like a scanned texture, and that digital ice one even more so.

but, if the decrack action nor the FFT does the job, this isnt that hard to fix with cloning and such. there's a lot of detail to work with.

[tawnidilly]

Originally Posted by Kraellin

you might get some results from FFT, also. that crackling is almost like a scanned texture, and that digital ice one even more so.

but, if the decrack action nor the FFT does the job, this isnt that hard to fix with cloning and such. there's a lot of detail to work with.

Thank you,
Right now my biggest problem is the color and the staining on the face. I have replaced the blue channel with the green channel and worked with the levels, brightness, hue and saturation etc. Then I tried replacing the blue with the red channel and working with levels, brightness, hue and saturation etc. I have gotten some good results except im having an issue trying to determine the true colors in the picture. The stripes for example.

[Kraellin]

the stripes, as best i can tell, are red on a white background. that was fairly common back then, i would think. the cap is blue stripes on a white background with a blue bill, a bit darker than sky blue, but not a royal by any means.

[mistermonday]

Hi Tawnidilly,
Fine cracks such as these often respond well to noise filters such as Noiseware. I tried a light application of it and it attenuated the cracks significantly. A color coreection filter brought the colors back in range and a Hue Sat adj shifted the green cast to a more flesh tone color. The hat appears to be white and light blue.
Good luck with the restoration.
Regards, Murray

[byRo]

I have a picture where almost every square inch is crackled. I dont even know where to start.

I find the median filter very useful in these cases. You can fill in the smaller cracks and not have to worry too much about losing the edges.
I used a setting of 5 for the background and 1 for the subject.

To get rid of some more noise I threw away the blue channel, making a 50/50% mix of Red and Green and using this as Luminosity.

For evening up the light and dark patches I used D&B (painting with light).

For the easier spots, just cloning.

For the missing bits, although I wouldn't consider myself

a very good artist

I did try and put things back where they should be using smudge painting.

For colours, I used Selective Colours, and then just painted anything that was looking odd.

If I was doing this "for real", I would still fix some more things - but this has already taken up about an hour.

Rô

[tawnidilly]

Wow,
Thank you and everyone for all the help. Im still struggling with the picture. Thank you for your help and suggestions. I can't tell all of you how nice it is to have this resource. I welcome all help.
Thanks again,
Tawnidilly

[Kraellin]

my first step was to blend your two samples together. i liked aspects of both so i blended them together using a soft light.

after that, i decided to try mistermonday's suggestion of a noise filter and use psp's digital camera noise removal. this got rid of a lot of it, but i also tried byRo's suggestion of using a median filter. this got rid of even more and still left enough of the original detail to work with.

after that it was a smudging and cloning and some hue/sat to bring the colors back around.

as you can see from my after/before image, this photo can be restored quite nicely with the exception of the blown out blacks near the bottom (unless you want to paint), but they are only incedental to the whole, so no worries there.

[Nan]

Very impressive Craig. I gave up after 2 tries.
Nan

[Kraellin]

thanks, nan

if it wasnt for paint shop pro's pretty impressive 'digital camera noise removal' tool, i'd still be working on it.

[Nan]

I DID try psp's digital camera noise removal (and a lot of other things) but still didn't get it right. I must not have used the right settings. You did good.
Nan

[tawnidilly]

Originally Posted by Kraellin

my first step was to blend your two samples together. i liked aspects of both so i blended them together using a soft light.

after that, i decided to try mistermonday's suggestion of a noise filter and use psp's digital camera noise removal. this got rid of a lot of it, but i also tried byRo's suggestion of using a median filter. this got rid of even more and still left enough of the original detail to work with.

after that it was a smudging and cloning and some hue/sat to bring the colors back around.

as you can see from my after/before image, this photo can be restored quite nicely with the exception of the blown out blacks near the bottom (unless you want to paint), but they are only incedental to the whole, so no worries there.

All I can say is WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Im going to try to get mine to that!

[mistermonday]

Craig, excellent job!
Regards, Murray

[Kraellin]

thanks, nan. if i remember, the settings were around 90/70/60 on the small, medium, large and the lower settings were around 80(?) and only a 10% on sharpness. that's fairly close, i think, but probably not spot on.

the median settings were around 5, i think.

i also used a fairly light 'clarify' somewhere in there, once i had the cracking removed and most of the smudging done. i tend to use that near the end of any piece to give a bit more contrast.

oh, and i also used a bit of airbrush in there during the smudge/clone stage.

thanks, tawnidilly

thanks, murray

[tawnidilly]

Originally Posted by Kraellin

my first step was to blend your two samples together. i liked aspects of both so i blended them together using a soft light.

after that, i decided to try mistermonday's suggestion of a noise filter and use psp's digital camera noise removal. this got rid of a lot of it, but i also tried byRo's suggestion of using a median filter. this got rid of even more and still left enough of the original detail to work with.

after that it was a smudging and cloning and some hue/sat to bring the colors back around.

as you can see from my after/before image, this photo can be restored quite nicely with the exception of the blown out blacks near the bottom (unless you want to paint), but they are only incedental to the whole, so no worries there.

HI Kraellin,
Thank you so much for the beautiful work on my picture. I have tried and have not even come close to what you achieved! Could you maybe give me a slower step by step ( kind of, I know it can be lengthy) My first question is you said you "blended" the 2 samples. How did you do that? I have the cloning and hue/sat thing down as well as the noise removal and median filter.
I just can't seem to bring the true skin tones out. I have not used the smudge option and am not familiar with its actions.
Thanks for any advice!
Tawnidilly

[Kraellin]

'blending' in this case means taking the image from one layer and blending it with the image from another layer using one of the 'blend modes'. blend modes are simply different ways of combining two or more images or of borrowing parts of one into another.

what i did to blend your two samples was, in paint shop pro, i opened both images and then did a control c (to copy the image into the clipboard) and then highlighted the other image and did a control L, to paste that copied image into another layer over the other.

attached is a screenshot of all this.

what program are you using, tawn?

[tawnidilly]

Originally Posted by Kraellin

'blending' in this case means taking the image from one layer and blending it with the image from another layer using one of the 'blend modes'. blend modes are simply different ways of combining two or more images or of borrowing parts of one into another.

what i did to blend your two samples was, in paint shop pro, i opened both images and then did a control c (to copy the image into the clipboard) and then highlighted the other image and did a control L, to paste that copied image into another layer over the other.

attached is a screenshot of all this.

what program are you using, tawn?

Thank you for the example and explaination.
I use photoshop elements 4.0, 5.0, photoshop 7.0 and paintshop pro photox2Most of my restoring is done with 7.0.

[Kraellin]

ok, good. you'll find blend modes in all of those programs. i tend to use paint shop pro mostly due to the simplicity of use. you might find the same.