water damage

[delph99]

Hello all! I have an old photo that had some water damage and got stuck to the glass in the frame. I scanned it thru the glass and here is part of it showing the water damage (blue sections). I use photoshop elements 6 for my editing. I was going to try and use the healing brush? is there another way? Seems as if there should be a better way to remove the damage. this is just one section of this photo (i had to scan three separate sections and then am going to photostitch it together.) Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! I am just getting back into the photoshop scene after a little while off from babies and family .....you guys are totally inspiring!

thanks for any help!1914b small for post 1.jpg

[TommyO]

Originally Posted by delph99

... is there another way?

Not really. Between the healing brush, clone stamp, and patch tool, you should be able to fix it all rather quickly.

Sometimes, I start in an area and use the clone stamp in "color" blend mode. This brings back much of the desired color so that the other tools work better and leave less tell-tale signs of being used. You may find the patch tool works real well here, since the textures are strong and blend easily. Just work it in small pieces until you find the size that works best.

Very nice image, unfortunate it was damaged, as it seemed to be in really good condition.

[philbach]

Well since this was a black and white image with tone, I looked at all of the channels and found that the red channel seemed to be the least damaged.

I then used the channel mixer and just used the red channel and converted the photo to black and white.

Then I used the various tools including the clone tool and healing brush.

Finally I put the tone back in

[delph99]

you guys are totally rockin! I've been working on the image and for a change i am really making progress! I use photoshop elements 6 and could not figure out out how to use just the red channel...but i converted it to black and white using the "convert to black and white" tool and it was better than what i had....a few extra steps because i corrected the damage and then had to re-convert it to rgb to add the color tint back in but THANKS! I never would have thought of that - i'm really a bit out of touch.... Now - of course - i have one other issue. The text on the image is blurred in one spot and clear in another..... any suggestions on how to even this out? If you look on my original attachment - you can see what i mean....

[philbach]

Well you can select the text area and try to "sharpen it" or using a pencil or tiny brush on a separate layer draw on the edges.