Badly Scratched Old Wedding ~Photo

[HILDA WOOD]

Hi All,
This is the only surviving photo of Mom & Dads wedding. I have had several attempts already but get stuck every time with the fading over the suite on the man on the left. Also none of the noise plug ins take out all the fine scratch marks without destroying too much detail. Any ideas please.
Thanks

[Cupcake]

Dust and Scratches,then bring back the details.
Levels,blending on some places on the face.
Sepia and a small amount of color added,and also a frame.

I have a larger file if you want.

[0lBaldy]

Originally Posted by HILDA WOOD

none of the noise plug ins take out all the fine scratch marks without destroying too much detail. Any ideas please.
Thanks

use a noise plug-in on a combined, and copied layer... use a hide all mask(black) on this copied layer to hide the repair.. using a small, soft brush a bit bigger than the scratch or spot, paint with white on just the offensive area leaving the rest of the pictures detail as is

[mistermonday]

When you look at the actual paper photo, can you see more detail than you can in the scan? If yes, then I would start with a rescan using a scanner with a high dynamic range. I would also make two scan - one vertically and the other with the image rotated 90 degrees. Between the two scans you may be able to attenuate the streaking.
I think what is most important in this photo is the preservation / restoration of the faces and that is what I would focus on foremost.
I would use a High Pass filter to isolate and sharpen the fine edges and create an edge mask to protect those edges. Selective cloning, healing, and blrring on the rest to clean some of the clothing and background up would be next. It depends what you want to accomplish in the finished restoration.
Regards, Murray

[Kraellin]

hi hilda,

tough image! start by bringing out all the detail you can. dont bother with noise reduction at first. just 'find the image'. and when you've found all you can, you're going to find that there's quite a bit of ruined data, blown out whites and blown out blacks. the options there are 'dont bother, it's too far gone' or rebuild.

once you've found the image, then you can start reducing noise, rebuilding, correcting whatever and so on. and, on an image like this that is rather severely noised up, you might want to clone/airbrush/smudge out some of the worst stuff first then de-noise. i'd also suggest not trying to take out all the noise at once. do a light de-noise and some more clone/smudge/airbrush and go back and forth. i use psp's noise reduction because i can specify whether i want to take out large, medium or small noise. on this image i'd be very tempted to only use the small and use clone for the larger stuff.

rebuilding on a photo like this can be tricky. look for edges to help. like, find the line of an arm and use that to define the body next to that arm and so on. i like to use airbrush on these to start. normally i just brush some paint on to kind of highlight what i want to do and then blur the whole and erase around the blurred area to remove unwanted and then a VERY light erase on the whole to reduce the effect so it doesnt look so much like an airbrush.

you've got a lot of work ahead of you on this one. it's pretty bad off. but, the main portions, the heads/faces are remarkably in fair shape, which is surprising given the rest of the image. so, it's certainly not a hopeless task.

i mentioned rebuilding is optional. this is quite true. there's no real need to rebuild a pair of pants on an image like this unless you're doing some sort of historical presentation or something. dont sweat the lesser important areas too much. it'll just drive you crazy

[HILDA WOOD]

Hi everyone,
Lots of recommendations here, so will try my best taking them all into account. When I have done, I will post again with the finished result.
Thanks to you all, I did get into a bit of a mental block after about the seventh attempt, at least now I have more to go on.
Thanks.

[mistermonday]

Ali, you might want to check out this thread:
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/pho...storation.html
Regards, Murray

[HILDA WOOD]

mistermonday,
That restoration was truly amazing. I dont understand the 'cross polarisation' bit though. Anyone help on that?
Thanks

[mistermonday]

A Polarization filter only allows light waves travelling at certain angles to enter a lense, scanner or other light capturing device. Polarizing filters are often used on camera lenses to filter out reflection off surfaces of water or window glass or shiny faces (automobiles), etc. The filter can be rotated so as to optimize what light gets through. I would assume that Chuck Uebele used the filter to minimize some of the streaks and scratches when photographing or scanning the photo. Why don't you go back to the thread and ask Chuck for more info.
Regards, Murray

[HILDA WOOD]

As promised, heres a copy of a more recent attempt to restore the wedding photo. Not quite what I want, so will probably try again, too much detail lost in the faces I think and they don't merge into the background like they should. This was a high res scan at 1200. At least I am a bit more confident about removing the scratches.
Thanks to you all who helped point me in the right direction.
Regards

[Kraellin]

i had a go at this, hilda. tricky image.

there's no way i can tell you everything i did. this was done over a couple days, but i do know i started with things like 'fade correction', a little 'clarify', some 'shadows/midtones/highlights', a little brightness/contrast and anything else i could find to give some contrast and thus, hopefully bring out the image more.

after that, i tried something new. rather than start in cloning, i made a blank layer and started airbrushing at a very low opacity, around 2 or 3. i wasnt trying to remove blemishes or spots or scratches; i was only trying to define edges a bit more and add a little smoothing. i started with the background and also did some of the clothing. again, this was to help define things where some 'bleeding' had occurred (things running into each other as if they had bled). this actually helped me define the picture better. i even airbrushed in some shadows here and there (very mild).

after that, i was a bit perturbed with the blown out whites, so i painted some of those down a few tones. i simply painted the small ones and made a selection of the wedding dress and then painted it.

still, using mostly airbrush, i did a little reconstruction where i thought i could make a decent guess as to content. notice i didnt touch the lower left hand side of the image. there just wasnt enough there that i could tell what to rebuild.

after that, it was mostly my standard fare of airbrush, clone and push. i did almost all of the facial work with push. i vary the opacity on that between about 30 and 50, though, that's not a fixed thing. sometimes i go even lighter or heavier, but most of the work is within that range. i do this on blank layers set to 'use all layers'. generally, you want to keep it pretty light on faces. small changes in faces can make seemingly huge differences in one's appearance.

once i was fairly happy with most of the work, i did a copy all layers and paste to new layer giving me one layer with all the previous layer's work on it. i duplicated that and on the duplicate i ran psp's digital camera noise removal on roughly medium settings, something like 50/25/12, or 40/20/10 maybe, but not a heavy noise removal at all.

that smoothed things up mostly, but left some telltale noise along edges. i used push to smooth those down and that was pretty much it.

that's fairly close to what i did. it at least covers most of the major points. hope it helps

[0lBaldy]

Originally Posted by HILDA WOOD

mistermonday,
That restoration was truly amazing. I dont understand the 'cross polarisation' bit though. Anyone help on that?
Thanks

Some Standard Copying Techniques:
Shows samples of the following:
Standard Copy Setup - two lights and an easel or copystand.
Lighting for Surface Texture - raking light.
Photographing Through Glass - not shooting the photographer
Minimizing Surface Reflection - cross polarizing. (good for silvering)
Minimizing Surface Reflection - superimposed images.
Sculpture Photography - bounced flash.

(Thanks to 'bpurvis')

[HILDA WOOD]

Thanks Kraellin, loved the smoothness you achieved in the clothing. What do you mean by 'push' please?
Thanks

[HILDA WOOD]

OlBaldy,
That information is very useful.
Thank you.

[Kraellin]

hi hilda,

'push' is a paint shop pro brush. i'm told it's similar to a heavy smudge brush in photoshop. i use it frequently to work on fine details in restorations. i generally use a very small brush and a medium opacity, depending on the application needed.

so, you didnt like the faces?

[HILDA WOOD]

Thanks, I just have the advantage of knowing some of the people and some were restored totally true to themselves,and some just ever so slightly off key, but then, there wasnt much info there to start with, so Im not complaining!
Thanks

[Kraellin]

rokily dokily.

[marggg]

Kraelin,

Seems like most of the beautiful work you did on this was achieved by artistic means (for lack of a better term) than simply clicking on a filter, etc. Amazing work! All those faces.

[marggg]

Kraelin,
Do you know of a list that cross-references photoshop's command names with paint shop pro's names? I use ps and not sure exactly where to find some of the things you listed (like fade correction). Thanks.

[Kraellin]

hi marggg and welcome to RP

and thanks

there is a list... if it's still there. it is referenced in these threads... somewhere. so, there shld be a link in this forum... somewhere. lol. yeah, real helpful, i know. but, it does exist.
hang on, let me try a couple things...

ok, here we go: http://paintshoppro.info/tutorials/p...dictionary.htm

i dont know if that's up to date or not with cs4 and psp x2.

fade correction in paint shop pro is for like an image that has faded quite a bit, especially a black and white and that has faded towards a dull white. it will restore contrast really well in situations like that and bring back the darks and lights.

clarify, another psp filter, is similar to fade correction, but it tends to actually alter pixels more white and more dark based on the existing shades. it's a good final type of filter in bringing out that last bit of detail.

and push is another one i use a lot. push is a brush tool. i'm told it's comparable to a heavy smudge in photoshop.

[HILDA WOOD]

Hi All,
Christmas gave me an opportunity to try again at this one. Thought I would post the results.
Happy New Year to all

[Kraellin]

well, you've certainly found more of the image there, dear! that's good

[HILDA WOOD]

Thank you. Looking back at yours, (which I was impressed with, really,)I think I should soften it a bit, I probably got a bit carried away with bringing back the detail and left it a bit grainy.

[aartist]

Hilda, I like your results!
Great Photo.

[Kraellin]

thanks, hilda