Damaged image in need of help

[annubis]

Hi, I have been asked to restore this image of a friends parents. I don't even have the original image only a copy. I have scanned it in and attempted to repair but am having lots of problems with the missing colour information. I have only recently begun to try my hand at restoration so my skills are still very limited. I would be grateful for any help or advice that anyone could give me regarding this image. Thanks in advance.

[aartist]

I used split channel RGB and worked with the Green image only.
Cloned/Scratch Removal, then Dark/Lightened portions.
Turned to B&W, then recolored most of photo.

[philbach]

Annubis what aartist did was to look at the three channels in the channels palette that make up the color image. The blue channel was a mess, the red channel was also distorted. The green channel was the best. So he restored the green channel which means its a black and white photograph and then he colorized the touched up green channel.

You can get some color clues for colorization from the original photo.

Ha at least I think that is what he did.

[jeremy1986]

i used Photo Elements 6 and used the color replacement tool and healing brush quite a bit. If you are interested in a more in-depth description send me a message. I am still working on it. Still have the Wall pattern to recolor and still has some spots that need more work but this is what i got.

[annubis]

Thanks very much to all for your efforts, I will try to replicate what you have done for myself. Looks like I have a very long journey ahead of me....

[mistermonday]

Annubis, try the following:
- Open the image
- Next from the Image Menu select Duplicate to make a copy of the image
- Swict back to the original image but leave the duplicate open
- Do Image>Mode>LAB Color
- Hit Ctrl+5 to select the B channel
- Hit Ctrl+I to Invert it
- Hit Ctrl+2 to restore the composite view
- Image>Mode>RGB to return to RGB color space
- Ctrl+J to duplicate the background
- Next do Image>Apply Image; from the options select the Duplicate Image, select the Green Channel, Normal blend mode, opacity 100%. The layer should now look grayscale.
- Change the layer Blend Mode from Normal to Luminosity
Now after that 2 minute of effort, you should have a much better base to work from. The skin should be much closer to normal color and the luminosity across the image will be much better even though you will not notice that yet.
The 1st thing I would do is run a noise filter on the image to smooth out some of the noise. Then apply a hue/sat adj layer to fine tune the skin color (or the good part of the skin). Add a blank layer above and set to Color Blend mode. Sample good colors or new colors and paint over the good looking areas. You should find that when you paint good color on the bad parts of the faces, that the tone will be pretty smooth and some of those patches will disappear.
Use the clone, patch, or heal to fix some of the patches where the worst stains were.
Good luck with the restoration.
Regards, Murray

[annubis]

Thanks Murray, I am trying the walkthrough that you provided. made some progress will keep trying to improve it as time allows. Jeremy I have not got elements at the moment I am using photoshop V7. but I will experiment with all the techniques that you have all been so kind to pass on to me. Thank you all once again.

[philbach]

Ok Murray, my man, how did you know that inverting the B channel would result in a nice restoration of color? Just wondering.

[mistermonday]

Hi Phil, Skin that should have been yellow based looked blue/purple and other arteas that should have been closer to yellow looked blue/purple. That's exactly what you get when you invert the B channel in LAB.
Regards, Murray

[chillin]

I selectively did adjustments using curves, HSL & levels + I add some texture using the green channel.

[Cupcake]

My try,
did some recoloring in Painter.

[jeremy1986]

here is my progress so far. still have some work left

[einfallspinsel]

My quick try using misterrmondays method (see above) + curves/levels + selective color adjustments and color overlays (i sampled a color from the face, created a new layer, set it to color mode and painted over the areas that didn't have the right color)