Suggestions for restoring an old image

[Caravaggio]

I have an old photo from the 1930s of my mother that is in bad shape. It has a lot of fading from sun damage as well as a lot of dirt. I started trying to restore it, but have not done much photo restoration before so am looking for any suggestions for techniques. I looked at the channels and they all seem equally faded and none seems better than the others.

The retouch which is in progress has a slight application of the reduce noise filter and then some cloning, painting and healing which needs a lot more work. Above the cloning and painting layer, I put a darkening curve set to luminosity to darken the whole image. Then there is a black and white adjustment layer which is helping to darken the image and a gradient map layer for color. Finally there is a brightness contrast layer on top of the layer stack to further adjust the luminosity.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

[chiragkhanna]

can i use this photo in my portfolio?

[Caravaggio]

I am sorry, but you can't use this image for your portfolio. Both my mother and my aunt died a few years ago and it is still a little painful for me. I am restoring the photo as a private memorial for my family. Thank you for understanding.

[Kraellin]

caravaggio,

rather than darkening, if you have access to paint shop pro, try the 'fade correction' filter. it's perfect for this type of image as a first step. it brings back contrast without darkening the overall. it also shows up a lot of detail, including all the stains and other mars. i think some folks may shy away from this because they dont want to see all the stains but, i love em! when you 'find the image', you also have to find the problems. i dont know of any equivalent filter in photoshop that does as nice a job as this one in psp.

that's all i've done on this image, just the fade correction. i did it at full strength. feel free to use my image if you like.

[Caravaggio]

Thank you, Kraellin. What you did is really interesting and shows me how much detail and information is really there in the damaged original. I only have photoshop CS5. Perhaps I will find a way with a better curve adjustment to recover more info.

[mistermonday]

For images which are faded as these are, it is very important to extract as much detail as possible and the to work on fixing dust, spots, cracks etc.
A good way to extract considerable detail in PS is to add a levels adj layer above the background and compress the histogram channel by channel. This will also usually shift the color back toward normal and restore contrast. If you prefer to have the color of your background, you can change the Blend Mode of the Level adj layer to Luminosity. You can get plenty of detail back before you start working on the dust spots. To continue the restore, it will help if you frequency separate the image where you can quickly heal and patch on the high frequency layer. Here is a few minutes of it, attached.
Good luck with the restore, you should be able to get a really nice image when you are done.
Regards, Murray

[Caravaggio]

Thank you, Murray. I am going to start over and try to follow your technique. What number did you use for the gaussian blur on the low pass layer?

[mistermonday]

If you want to work on those tiny spots, a Radius of 4 will allow you to use the spot healing tool on the HF layer where you can zoom through at warp9 getting rid of them. Even if you zap the most prominent / visible ones it will make a big difference to the image.
If you want to quickly eliminate the large deep blue blotches, a radius of 30 will allow you to use the patch toolvery rapidly to replace those medium and large blemishes with good texture.
Regards, Murray

[Kraellin]

caravaggio,

you're welcome.

you might also try the shadows/midtones/highlights tool in ps.

[Nezbitten]

I have CS5 and used "auto tone" followed by convet to black and white and used the sliders to get a nice contrast. Then Dust and scratches set to "2" and "17" and then on a duplicate layer dust and scratches to "16" and "9" set a layer mask to hide all. I then painted back in all the areas of flat colur and the background. It was lighting quick and is a good starting point to finish it off with a few minutes tidying up.

Neil

[Learnin'lady]

Heres my take - needs some touch up badly but you get the idea.
http://oldfadedmemories.com/original1.jpg

[Nezbitten]

Is that the signs of noise reduction "flecks" in the back ground? Ive noticed this when using NeatImage, if you push the reduction too far it seems to enhance the minor defects and turn them into fairly enhanced ticks or check marks. I tend to use the D&S method I described for backgrounds as this does not occur. If I add a bit of noise and a slight blur to the noise on the background this also helps after I’ve used D&S

[pavkey88]

Wow - that's an awesome result. I should really experiment with the D&S filter. Anything that speeds up the workflow, I'm all in.

[Southbay]

Just foolin' with it. Blue channel, Polaroid dust & scratch, neat image, clone-a-rama, resize, big curves move, local contrast USM, neat image again, surface blur w/fade, burn a few mid tones, throw on a light sepia, USM tickle... it's a bit arty, but I'm moving on.

[Caravaggio]

Thanks Nezbitten, Leaning Lady and Southbay for sharing your techniques and showing me what you have done with the image. They all look good. I like what you did Learnin'lady except for the artifacting in the background. What did you do the blue channel, Southbay? Put a levels adjustment on the channel?

[artistique]

Hi Caravaggio,

Convert to blk & wh and adjust the levels.

Use spot healing brush tool, cloning and smudging. Add some gaussian noise back in, adjust the blk-wh levels again if necessary and give it a little kiss of yellow to warm it up. Hope this helps a bit. It's a beautiful photo...

Cheers!

[Caravaggio]

You did a really beautiful job with the image, artistique. Thanks.

[Kraellin]

clone-a-rama

is this a new plug-in, southbay? and nice job

nice job, artistique, and welcome to RP

[Southbay]

Originally Posted by Kraellin

is this a new plug-in, southbay? and nice job

HA! That plugin offers "Less cloning than required, but as much cloning as I'm willing to do". For more effective cloning, I might upgrade to Clone-a-rama Pro someday.

Yeah, nice shot at it, Artistique!

[Kraellin]

"Less cloning than required, but as much cloning as I'm willing to do".

that sounds like a good mix. i'll have to try it. it's a freebie, right?

[Southbay]

Originally Posted by Kraellin

that sounds like a good mix. i'll have to try it. it's a freebie, right?

It's free, but not for commercial use.

[LloydM]

Originally Posted by Southbay

"Less cloning than required, but as much cloning as I'm willing to do". For more effective cloning, I might upgrade to Clone-a-rama Pro someday.

Where would one find "clone a rama" ..?

[Kraellin]

http://www.google.com/search?q=clone...x=&startPage=1

and here i thought she was kidding

[Southbay]

Originally Posted by Kraellin

http://www.google.com/search?q=clone...x=&startPage=1

and here i thought she was kidding

If you're referring to me, the she is a he. I'm ScanMan in other groups, but someone here had beaten me to it. My Avatar is my Wife's Grandmother, circa 1910.

[Kraellin]

ah! the avatar threw me. you might want to add something to your signature to let us know

[tom60634]

I just concentrated on the most bothersome ( to my eye ) problems.
I used the dust and scratches filter in Photoshop applied through a mask.
I used Noise Ninja on a second layer, its built in masking facility was most helpful.

I left the yellow stain in the photo,it is so uniform that it seems almost like a duotone type of effect. The golden color seems to add a certain charm, once again to my eye.

This would be my starting moves.

[sergio2263]

Originally Posted by Caravaggio

I have an old photo from the 1930s of my mother that is in bad shape. It has a lot of fading from sun damage as well as a lot of dirt. I started trying to restore it, but have not done much photo restoration before so am looking for any suggestions for techniques. I looked at the channels and they all seem equally faded and none seems better than the others.

The retouch which is in progress has a slight application of the reduce noise filter and then some cloning, painting and healing which needs a lot more work. Above the cloning and painting layer, I put a darkening curve set to luminosity to darken the whole image. Then there is a black and white adjustment layer which is helping to darken the image and a gradient map layer for color. Finally there is a brightness contrast layer on top of the layer stack to further adjust the luminosity.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

There is a very good tutorial here which is very good and it's exactly like your photo the results are very good.

hope this helps


helen