Grandmother restored, but need some final help

[Coolhawk]

I have emmensly enjoyed this community over the last 1.5 years, and thanks to all I've learned tremendously.

Most old pictures I've tried my hand on, have come out great due to the help and tips from this site. One however have been bugging me for a long time now.

The original picture scanned I've uploaded to my website -> www.coolhawk.com/retouchpro/YiaYia.jpg

I could simply not get the original under 100Kb without loosing too much detail, so I posted external link to it.

The original picture is very old ~60 years or so, and have the famous "Honeycomb" pattern in it. From many of the tutorials on this site I have done the following so far in PhotoShop 7 (Dont have CS)

1: Running FFT (Alot of try's to get it right without too many vertical lines in the picture when doing IFFT in the end)
2: Cloning and healing
3: Making 2'end layer and running Gassian blur on it
4: Unsharp mask on first layer and then merge down

The result is attached here. But I'm not very satisfied with it, it seems to dull and specially the details in the dress and overall picture seems to "flat" to me. I still have to learn the finer arts of processing the end results.

If anyone have any suggestion on how I can improve this final picture I'd be a happy apprentice.

Coolhawk

*Edit*

Changed uploaded format from *.rar to *.jpg

[learninlady]

Is there a way you can a different format than .rar ?

[learninlady]

Just doing a high pass sharpen radius 213.00 strength 100%
this is what I get from the photo you posted above.
Thats all I did nothing else

[learninlady]

Ah, jpg, much better I see the honeycomb now.

[learninlady]

this is what I came up with a quick fix. The url to the larger image is:
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...dy/YiaYia2.jpg

[0lBaldy]

I used Image Analyzer because of the preview button where you can see what you have repaired before finalizing the picture.. (Hint: You might want to zoom in a bit before using the filter) used Filters>Frequency Domain Filter... Just did the major stars with a size 20 pen and then darkened the field by clicking the bottom view button three times and covered any light spots I saw
into Photoshop
levels
Imagenomic Noiseware @ default with a bit of sharpening
posted

[Southbay]

Tried a red tone on it.

[Southbay]

HA! Disregard my last post, I just now discovered the original pic. How embarrassing. Maybe I'll have a go at it...

[Southbay]

From the original textured photo. Slight blue tone. Didn't have all day to fuss with the lower damage, so off it went. Neat Image, cloning, etc.

In my experience, this type of paper finish was very popular in the 70's. Always a pain to deal with.

[learninlady]

Originally Posted by 0lBaldy

I used Image Analyzer because of the preview button where you can see what you have repaired before finalizing the picture.. (Hint: You might want to zoom in a bit before using the filter) used Filters>Frequency Domain Filter... Just did the major stars with a size 20 pen and then darkened the field by clicking the bottom view button three times and covered any light spots I saw
into Photoshop
levels
Imagenomic Noiseware @ default with a bit of sharpening
posted

I love to learn. And you just showed me the Image analyzer. I did what you had stated with the size 20 pen and then I added a couple dots of my own using a smaller pen. wow, I am impressed and mad that I wish I had known about that program a long time ago. N'awe, now I want to go back and redo everything Ive done..lol
Live and learn.

[Southbay]

Originally Posted by learninlady

N'awe, now I want to go back and redo everything I've done..

You're not alone there. How many times have I started again from scratch (literally!)?

I remember scanning and working over 100 medium format WWI negatives a couple of years ago, then discovering fluid-mount scanning which worked wonderfully on their particular graininess. Redid them all.

That's the downside of inexperience (my own included). Many who set out to scan a trunk load of family memories are motivated to do a great job. By the time they're finished a few thousand images though, they're often left with that nagging feeling..."Damn, I wish I'd know back then, what I know now"!

Keeps it fun, doesn't it?!

[learninlady]

Ah, Southbay you hit the proverbial nail on the head.
I have been going back on jobs Ive done and feeling like I should redo everything and send them out!
But, the customers were happy and thats what matters, the more I learn the better I can get hopefully and do better by others!

[Kraellin]

hi coolhawk and welcome to RP.

nice job on removing the honeycomb.

i took your results and did a few more things to enhance things a bit more.

fade correction 1
digital camera noise removal (fairly heavy)
unsharp mask 4/100/5
blank layer and a bit of clone and a lot of push (smudge)

[Coolhawk]

I'm awestruck, so many of you in such a short time took the time to take a look at Grandmother!

I really like what you all have done to her, and in your own special ways, which gives the picture more life and depth than I was able to give it. You have all given me new ideas to postprocess pictures, those ideas will now be written down and tried on new pictures, still have loads to work on.

@learninlady

I like what you did on your second try, the high pass sharpen I tried also, but never got the desired affect on the picture, I wanted to bring the picture alive, and on your second try, is so much better than me fifling with this for ages (over a year now). I has a somewhat "dreamy" touch to it, did you use Guassian blur on a second layer there as well, and then levels? Seems I never mastered to get this levels function to work for me correctly.

@OlBaldy

You just made my day pointing out Image Analyzer, as learninlady mentioned, I wanna redo alot of my pics now I'm amazed how better this is to work with than FFT in PhotoShop which have been my favorite for these kinds of pictures, however I always got vertical lines on the sides of the picture which I was never able to get rid of, but in Image Analyzer they are gone all of them. I've tried redoing your steps in Image Analyzer, and I get a much better end result than with FFT in PS.

It seems however that you are able to draw out more details in the picture as I wanted, the chair and the dress stands out very clear and sharp, this was what I was looking for, and tried to follow you steps on that as well, but after levels it looks awfull, I might just be a novice in doing this post processing, or I'm missing a major point somewhere.

@Southbay

I did some experimenting with the blue and red tones, this gives very nice results, thank you very much for the tips on this, it seems to give the picture a more "rounded" appearence, I will keep this in my backhead for the future.

@Kreallin

I like you take on this as well, also towards the "dreamy" look, and again you are able to bring the picture more to life. This is what I'm trying to learn now, and I was never satisfied with what I was doing.

Thanks to all of you here who took the time. I will now give Grandmother another try (or several) with all the tips and newfound techniques I've just learned here, and then I will post a new try again for all to judge

Coolhawk

[Flora]

Great job everybody!

I just love these old pictures!

I concentrated on the lady's face and didn't do much for background or dress...

• I also started with FFT and got acceptable results (Attachment 1)

• I minimized the 'noise' (I use Neat Image but any noise removing software will do...)

• I then used Clone Tool and Heal Brush on the remaining spots.

• I used Levels and Curves to even out shadows and highlights and to add some contrast to the image.

• I used several blank layers set to Overlay, Soft Light, Lighten and Darken to enhance selected parts of the picture. (Technique described in this Tutorial ... just scroll down the page to the paragraph: BLANK/EMPTY LAYERS SET TO.... .

• I used the High Pass filter and Unsharp mask for selective sharpening.

(Attachment 2) my result
(Attachment 3) a 200% Zoom of the lady's face

Originally Posted by Coolhawk

1: Running FFT (Alot of try's to get it right without too many vertical lines in the picture when doing IFFT in the end)

.... you can minimize the vertical/Horizontal lines in FFT by increasing the canvas size before running the filter .... Decrease the Canvas to its original size after running IFFT... Usually, most of the 'lines' will be on the increased canvas frame and will be 'cut off' once you go back to the original size

[Coolhawk]

To be honest, I got so caught up in this I have barely left my computer since my last post....

I've taken all suggestions and inputs in this thread into action, and finally after been fiddeling with this picture for over a year, I finally see a result on my screen that even my wife goes "wow" to, so I must be doing something right now which I didn't do in the past.

For the final picture I did the following:

1: FFT in Image Analyzer (Freq. Domain Filter) The nice thing is it does not give the vertical lines that the FFT plugin for photoshop does!
2: Into photoshop running levels
3: Cloning and healing and small amount of Gaussian blur on a second layer
4: Cropping down the pic to exclude the hand/lower part (never was satisfied with my "fix" for that part)
5: Unsharp mask
6: Creating second layer running Gaussian blur on it -> merge down
7: Converting to Greyscale and back to RGB to get rid of sephia color
8: Tweaked a thing or 2 here and there.

End

@Flora

Very nice approach, I will look into this technique with working on multiple layers, I really like your results as well, and very good explanation step by step, I believe this is what give us noobs the best, been able to take from here and there and develop ones own "way" of doing things, talk about combining knowledge now

Again, and big thanks to all who gave their suggestions, you gave me heads up on a bunch of things I've wished I knew long time ago. Your opinions on my final picture would of course be appriciated as well, if you look close, you will see that I left a small amount of grain in it, it seemed to come out nicer this way.

Coolhawk

Below left: Initial to final before this thread
Below right: My final after taking tips and tricks given in this thread!

[Southbay]

What a difference. Looks great.

One little thing I did and you might consider, is to grab the darkest tone off the eyebrows and paint a little on both (soft brush/low opacity) to bring them out ever so slightly.

To my eye, anyway.

[unimatrix001]

nicely done flora and craig. i started with the fft filter, merged layers. I have not figured out the healing brush and clone tools so i use only the patch tool.
repaired large cracks and blemishes. didn't use any noise removal software thought it would look better with the grain left in. duplicated finished image
and set to soft light to increase contrast.

[Kraellin]

thanks, unimatrix

[learninlady]

Flora is wonderful as usual and all the others look nice too, but where is her ring? seems unless I looked to fast that in all of the remakes her ring is gone.

Looking back I guess there wasnt one. must be its time for a break, eyes are going.

[Flora]

Coolhawk,

thank you for your feedback.

Originally Posted by Coolhawk

......been able to take from here and there and develop ones own "way" of doing things, talk about combining knowledge now....

...you did 'hit the nail on the head' .... This is exactly what RetouchPro is all about!!!

Your final restoration looks just great!!


unimatrix001,

thank you very much for your feedback!!!

Very nice restoration .... a bit on the dark side for my taste, but very nice!!


learninlady,

thank you very much for your kind words!!!!

Great work!

Originally Posted by learninlady

seems unless I looked to fast that in all of the remakes her ring is gone.

Looking back I guess there wasnt one. must be its time for a break, eyes are going.

...I went back to the original to see if I had either missed the ring or simply cloned it away... I see what you mean (Attachment) .. but I never considered it a ring since it was placed right on the knuckle ....

[learninlady]

Yes, Flora, thats what I had seen also, so I wasnt totally blind...HA.
but it is misplaced so it must be a defect? maybe her ring was too big and slipped for the photo? odd, as with too much going on and learning to do the honeycomb, I had seen what I thought was a ring, but didnt faze me it was on her knuckle...lol
gotta keep my eyes wider open!

[Southbay]

For me, it was the unusual location of the artifact plus, it was on her right hand. Gone in a brushstroke!