Stain damage on color photo

[Gregcat]

Hi all,

I'm new to photo restoration so my experience is limited. I was very pleased to have found this site and I hope to learn a lot from all of you and be able to share my experiences with you soon. I have this specific picture of my deceased father that i'd like to restore to its original appearance. The photo has a lot of staining from moisture i believe. I've been wondering if there is a better strategy to get rid of the stains without having to spend hours on cloning, healing and patching tools. I have some experience with CS3 but apparently not enough to pull this off by myself. Is there someone out there who could point me to the right direction? Thanks!

[bulld0g]

here are 2 i have done but to do this properly will be time consuming



http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/2227/cockpit1yo6.jpg


http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/8210/cockpit2xd8.jpg

[Kraellin]

hi gregcat and welcome to RP.

post your image back here. this is the right place for it. i'll delete the other in the other forum when you have.

and here is what i did on your image. i did a color balance first. i also ran a curves on it to bring the whites down a bit. i then cloned. it wasnt all that bad or hard, so just grin and bear it. i also did a little airbrush, but that was mostly on the face and other skin areas. to end, i did another color balance and that was pretty much it.

for additional work, if you wanted, you could do something to the front, white windshield, giving it some color or something and could also bring the white of the guy's shirt down a bit more.

[Nan]

I spent about an hour and half on it so there's still more that could be done. I didn't fix every little spot. Did a lot of the usual, color adjustment, levels, cloning and also some change to target on some of the spots. A little digital camera noise removal and high pass sharpen.
Nan

[Gregcat]

Hi bulld0g and Kraellin,

thank you so much for your feedback, suggestions and the time you spent on my photo. because of the amount of detail on the dashboard i was a bit reluctant to use cloning on the stains. the blue channel is the worst of the 3 as far as stains and damage. i have been unsuccessful in replacing its info with some of the R&G channels in order to decrease the stain damage and so the cloning effort. i've been reading Katrin's book on how to replace channel info with the apply image command but i never seem to get it right. thanks again!

[Gregcat]

Thanks for your help Nan! i'll revisit my workflow and incorporate your suggestions as well. it really helps to have all this feedback!

[Kraellin]

you're welcome, gregcat.

but, it never fails. i tend to go blind as i work on an image for too long and then post it immediately. i look at what i posted yesterday and it's obvious i went color blind with the tint showing on the shirt and hair and so on. lol. and i shld know better! so, let that be a lesson to folks doing long spells on restoration or retouching... take a break before posting and look at your work again!

[chillin]

The stamp & a healing tool - a quick solution.

[jcasey170]

I've copied a colour version, then turned the orignal into greyscale, and back up to 8 bit. With the copy, I posterised it (I'm using paint shop pro XI), then gaussian blurred 8, and added it back to the greyscale copy as a colour legacy layer. Then just did a bit of judicious cloning where the colour still didn't look quite right and finally did a fade correction.

[Gregcat]

Hi chillin and jcasey170,

thanks for your suggestions and time spent on my photo. i'm experimenting with all the suggestions i've been receiving from all of you. it's being a great way to learn! thank you all!

jcasey170, would you mind defining what a color legacy layer is? i'm not familiar with this term. thank you!

[jcasey170]

Hi...I meant that I added it as a new layer but rather than just a normal layer I chose colour legacy from the options. Quite what the difference is, I'm not sure...but it seemed to work! Maybe somebody with more experience than me could get a bit more technical. Sorry I cant be more help, I'm a bit of a newbie to this myself!