The dreaded scotch tape stains

[cdaniel]

I'm not a professional retoucher - just do it for great family photos I find in my serious genealogy hunts.

I've done a lot of repairing with the cloning tool. Once used splitting into channels and went with channel that showed the most detail and least damage. I'm mostly a Paint Shop Pro user, so if you use a lot of Photoshop terms, you might want to be real specific because I'm not very experienced in it and even less so in my newer CS4.

Ok, so does anyone have any magic strategies for the dreaded scotch tape stains?

Besides tedious use of the clone tool, I'm open to other suggestions as well.

My original scan is more than 4 times this size, but had to scale down to be within forum limits. On the 2nd version, I did a bit of work on the face of the boy and the girl on the right. It's always difficult when the damage goes across such a key element as an eye, nose or lips.

On the 2nd image, I did some desaturation of the rightmost tape stain. An improvement but not a fix, of course.

[chillin]

Originally Posted by cdaniel

Ok, so does anyone have any magic strategies for the dreaded scotch tape stains?

Use frequency separations & curves.

[cdaniel]

Originally Posted by chillin

Use frequency separations & curves.

Ok. That sounds like Photoshop talk and, as mentioned, I'm not very familiar with it. Is there somewhere that shows a step by step on this?

Wow, that's amazing!

[mistermonday]

My tendency would be to desaturate the image. You can Dodge away the tape marks. Here is a few minutes worth attached.
Afterward go to work with healing, cloning, and patch tools.
There are some tutorials here at RP on Dodge & Burn plus a multitude of threads which you can find with the search button.
You have a lot of detail work to do but you should be able to get a pretty good restoration in the end.
Regards, Murray

[cdaniel]

Originally Posted by mistermonday

My tendency would be to desaturate the image. You can Dodge away the tape marks. Here is a few minutes worth attached.
Afterward go to work with healing, cloning, and patch tools.

Ok, I've never used healing and patch, so it will be a total experiment. Thanks.

[Kraellin]

Use frequency separations & curves.

chillin, i've heard a couple folks here now talking about this and i think someone even pointed to a reference or how-to, but could you point us there again or explain what this is and how to do it?

and cdaniel, i mostly use psp x3, so you can look at some of my stuff for some tips and what i do on pics like these. it's mostly clone, push and airbrush, but there's almost always something else. in this pic's case, try using 'fade correction' first. that shld bring the image out more.

[chillin]

Originally Posted by Kraellin

chillin, i've heard a couple folks here now talking about this and i think someone even pointed to a reference or how-to, but could you point us there again or explain what this is and how to do it?
....

I like to use a "Frequency Separation" for restoration.
I use the low frequency layer to correct the color & the high frequency to correct the texture (the healing brush has very limited impact on the low frequency). Here is a link where I have shown more samples & a link to an action I use.

[Kraellin]

thanks, chillin. got some studying to do now.