Oh were do I start?

[Dav]

Hi everyone,
Well I dont know how,or were to start with this photo,,the mildew stains are going to give me the most trouble,but the rest I can do.
So can anyone give me any pointers,,as to were to start with this?

Well i managed to get it to this ,using the colour range to select,and hue/sat to ajust,can anyone show me a better way?


Ok this is about the best i can do with this see the final b&w ,poor I know but thats why I`m on here,,thanks in advance for any help..
I`m off on holidays tomorrow so if i dont answer any replies please dont worry.
I will as soon as I get back.

[Dav]

Well mobile broadband is great lol,still no replies bummer,I thought I`d have some.
Oh well.
Well folks thx anyway I`ll be posting again soon.

[lokki]

I don't think you gave enough information about what you're doing and what you hope to accomplish...

The 3rd image is looking pretty good, if a little heavy in the contrast. I think for a complete restoration you're going to have to do some painting and serious detail work. For this particular image, save the B&W conversion until the end, and focus on recovering the textures and tones before desaturating completely.

[roger_ele]

Hi Dav,

In Photoshop, I ran a quick test in which I increased saturation and then used Select>Color Range to select the now bright colors. I then created a curves adjustment layer from that selection and changed the blend mode to multiply. I finally added a solid color adjustment black layer set to color blend mode to remove the color to judge the effect of the curves layer. This would be my starting place. A few notes ...

- I would not increase the contrast in the beginning stages of art work as seeing all of the detail possible will enable a better restoration job.
- You can mask the curves mask by dragging the curves layer into a new layers group and then add a mask to the group - then you can slowly paint in where you want the adjustment to show.
- You can then create two curves layers, one set to screen blend mode and one set to multiply blend mode - hide all masks and paint back slowly to lighten areas that are too dark on the curve layer set to screen mode and darken areas that are too light on the curves layer set to multiply mode.

Once you have selectively lightened and darkened the image to where you can see the what the original image looks like and the areas of damage are obvious as damage (instead of is that damage or original image?) then you can start repairing the image. Along with clone, healing and the paint brush I like to use the smudge tool sometimes to blend areas that should have a gradual transition - a gentle wiggle of the tool can do wonders ... choice of direction is everything... when done I add a new empty layer that I fill with gray, change to overlay mode and add noise to taste - this subtle grain effect 'ties' the image together and removes the feeling of no texture where I used the smudge tool ...

When you have it all pretty well roughed in, then you can use curves or levels to adjust brightness. and finish up the restoration.

Hope this is a help and good luck!
Roger

[Kraellin]

detail matters. check the original again, dav. the table is glass and thus transparent. the woman on the left has a mark on her face. get rid of it. fill in the missing texture of the men's sweaters/shirts. just paint it in on a blank layer over the rest. with the table being transparent, look at the middle man's legs/pants again.

your start is ok, but needs work yet. this is a fairly difficult image. the background is pretty much shot, the table reflections are difficult, the woman on the left needs face work, the sweaters are missing data, and the legs of the three on the right are going to be a bit tricky.

luckily, with the amount of data that is there, one can extrapolate the truth fairly well. the trick is bringing it out and filling it in. an image like this really needs hours to restore properly, so be prepared for it.

and hang in there, folks will come along to help more

[Dav]

Thanks everyone for the replies.
Lokki I`m just trying to restore the photo as best as I can, I was given it to have a go at,it was found in an old cupboard .

Rodger thx for the info ,thats why I love the fourm, I`ll be giving your technique a try when I get back off my hols.

Kraellin I know what you mean ,this image is a bad one and I agree it would need hours of work ,but thats why I love them, you know that feeling when you first look at a photo and think, "holy cow" I just got a bit overwelmed when I first saw it ,hence the post.
But its good to know like minded people are here thank-you all

[Kraellin]

ok, did a little work on this. the only thing different in this one from my standard method of working is, i first rotated the image 1/2 degree left first and i selected just the woman on the left and applied a 'fade correction' to that as well as a 'tone mapping' (from psp x3). this gave the woman a little more definition and matched up better with the rest of the folks in the image.

notice also that i didnt really try to correct the background too much. i just kind of smoothed it out a bit and left what i dont know as what i dont know, especially since it was just the background. i did define the person in the back a bit more, but not much.

[Dav]

Kraellin,thanks again for the input.
I`m playing with the painting tool,but to me the image is going to take a lot of time and effort.
I`m finding most of the stuff on the forums I want to know,but I kinda wonder away from the task lol,,theres so much to learn,I find a tutorial on something else,and end up giving that a go lol,btw good job on the "lady" .

But I was asking the person who owns the photo who was in it, and the Lady turns out to be a player in the Northern Ireland football team 1974 as are the other men in the photo lol,I can see how you thought it was a lady though.
Thx again Kraellin.

[lurch]

Why is he wearing a skirt, then?

[Dav]

Sorry I thought Kraellin meant the person on the far left of the photo

[0lBaldy]

Originally Posted by lurch

Why is he wearing a skirt, then?

LOL @ Lurch
I don't think the lady with the skirt is a HE.... The lady with the skirt does not need "a little more definition and matched up better with the rest of the folks in the image.(Craig)" but the person on the left end with girlish blond hair does look like a cute woman..... LOL, I thought that person was a lady also!!!!

[Kraellin]

all i can say is, it was the 70's. lol. (still looks like a woman, except maybe in the shoulder. lol ) (and yes, i did mean the person on the far left).

ok, enough of that. so dav, i'd like to see any progress you've made. it's entirely ok if you post progress pics of your various work to date as you go. it might even help, as folks can perhaps give advice as you go. it's not a bad way to take little bites as opposed to trying to process everything at once.

[Dav]

I will be posting, more photos as I go ,but as I`m on my holidays it will be a while.
For the moment I want to try and fix the sweaters on the 3 males as they seem to be badly damaged,so any pointers as to do this would be a great help.

[Kraellin]

i used mostly clone and airbrush on the sweaters.

[Dav]

thx kraellin