Help and evaluation

[Mosha]

Hi everyone, I know I've been away for a while, but have been following RP as often as I can.
A friend of mine asked me to help her with a photo of her mother. She doesn't have the original and the person that has it lost it after doing a pretty poor scan of it. To make things worse, the picture was printed in cloth, not paper so it has faded in different places and has a peculiar texture.
This is what I received and what I have been able to do so far.
Please help.
Happy to be back
Mosha

[Southbay]

Started with your edit. I suppose some sort of noise suppression to tone down the appearance of texture, is key. I used neat Image at 40. Color corrected to tone down the reds and yellows (still too yellow IMO). Curves to control the shadows a bit. Some burning around the eyes and hair. Nice shot, with lots of potential is you've got the time.

[Mosha]

Southbay, thanks for your time and advice. I'll follow your sugestions. I did try with noice reduction and Neat Image but couldn't come up with a result I was comfortable with. I was affraid to loose detail in order to get rid of the texture. I hope I can come up with something close to your results.
Mosha

[TommyO]

Mosha,
Your resulting image is very good. And Southbay's addition is certainly worth thinking about, as it seems to be a very good compromise with original detail vs removal of the cloth texture. In fact, leaving a little cloth texture gives the appearance of film or paper grain, which looks fine. I cannot offer any more suggestions other than picking areas to do some very fine d&b, as if doing a glamour retouch. Then possibly finding some parts from female models and warping/blending them into position with a very very light opacity, just to fill in those gaps in the pixels.

[Mosha]

Originally Posted by TommyO

Mosha,
Your resulting image is very good. And Southbay's addition is certainly worth thinking about, as it seems to be a very good compromise with original detail vs removal of the cloth texture. In fact, leaving a little cloth texture gives the appearance of film or paper grain, which looks fine. I cannot offer any more suggestions other than picking areas to do some very fine d&b, as if doing a glamour retouch. Then possibly finding some parts from female models and warping/blending them into position with a very very light opacity, just to fill in those gaps in the pixels.

TommyO, thanks for your encouraging words. When you say - finding parts from female models - can you be a bit more specific as to which missing pixels you refer?...
Mosha

[Jack The Ripper]

I hope somebody can chime in on this, there is a filter you can download caller TTK or TTD or something, it is a mathematial filter that turns the pic into what looks like a folded piece of paper with little stars....

it is excellent on getting rid of things like the scan lines and such.

there is a mention in it on a thread i started asking how to de-thatch images.......

[Mosha]

Thank you Jack , it is called FFT Fourier Transform. I've tried it and it doesn't work on the picture. Instead of rendering light spots which you should paint on, it renders thin uneven stripes which I painted on as instructed but doesn't change anything. I guess it has to do with the crosshatch pattern of the cloth.
I like the cloth texture. I am a volunteer in genealogy research and we usually beleive in restoring what ever object, documents, furniture and even photos as near as pssible to the original state without compromising it. Of course in photos is difficult to do a phisical restoration so we use digital. In this case, information, is the main goal. The owner is not going to print in cloth, but trying to comply with the originality issue, because of the texture, restoring becomes more difficult.
So any comments and suggestions are always welcome.
Mosha

[Southbay]

Originally Posted by Jack The Ripper

...it is a mathematial filter that turns the pic into what looks like a folded piece of paper with little stars....

On a Mac, the FFT process I use is here: http://rsbweb.nih.gov/ij/

[Mosha]

Philbach and all of you. Nice Work!!. I haven't thought of replacing the background, silly me. I was so caught up with the texture an detail that missed the obvious and simple aproaches.
Thanks again
Mosha

[philbach]

I kept the dark tone, replaced the background, and used neat image to decrease some of the texture

[TommyO]

Originally Posted by Mosha

When you say - finding parts from female models - can you be a bit more specific as to which missing pixels you refer?...
Mosha

Quite often, it's just not possible to restore damaged areas (missing pixels) without either doing so artistically, or bringing in parts from another image. We also don't notice the differences on the final image, since we are not comparing before and after. Especially, when something fairly generic is replaced, i.e. a shoulder, neck, cheek, etc.

For example, I have attached part of an image where a shoulder/neckline needed to be replaced. The final opacity could easily be adjusted to make the blend as natural as needed. But, the image I show has the opacity adjusted up some for comparison.

So, I was thinking something similar could be done to add some detail to various areas, i.e. her neckline. You would need to keep it very light in order not to change the image too much. If you go too far in one spot, it forces you to do so everywhere, which gets you away from the original goal.

[Mosha]

Got it... TommyO, thanks. I've done that but with garments, not flesh.
I´ll try it too.
Mosha