Any hope for this one

[customdavid]

I am continuing my work on Civil War stereoview restoration. I have run into a few that I would really like to restore, but appear to be almost too far gone. When I play with curves I can sometimes get parts of the image to appear, but do not know enough to know if it is even possible to rescue this one.

I have attached a small version, but the largest version (45 Mb) can be found at the Libarary of Congress site http://lcweb2.loc.gov/master/pnp/cwpb/00000/00071a.tif Hopefully someone will let me know if I am wasting my time on this one or not.

Thanks in advance,

David

[Tony W]

I believe that it is too far gone. While you can discern bodies on the ground there is IMO too little information to work with to get any satisfactory restoration. Hope someone is able to prove this wrong thought

[customdavid]

Tony -

Thanks for your response. I know there are some "miracle workers" that hang out here so, if anyone knows how to do it, they will be here. I suspect that you are right, but I still hope that there is something that can be done. This particular image is rather well known and studied. (See "Gettysburg: A Journey in Time" by William Frassanito).

What did give me some hope though was when I played with curves I could sometimes get pieces of it to jump out, but never the whole thing. Hoping someone else has a trick or two up their sleeve.

Thanks again for responding.

David

[Repairman]

Wow David; glad that didn't land on my doorstep!
I might have a way to 'improve' it but we're talking about going from really bad to just plain bad. I'll follow your link to the original and take a look.
R.

[mistermonday]

David, when I increase the contrast I can count 12 bodies lying there (zooming in close on the high res image) but there is not a great deal of detail in much of the background. Here is a low res screenshot attached.
Regards, Murray

[customdavid]

Murray -

Thanks for taking a shot. This is actually two halves of a stereo image, so in reality 6 bodies twice. Don't know if it would help to split the image in two and work on them both separately (if you go to my site civilwarin3D.com you can see results of other stereo images I have completed). Sounds to me that the consensus so far is that this is a lost cause. Most of the images on the Library of Congress site are in remarkably good shape (for their age) but there are a few like this that are crying out for help, but I think they cried out a little too late.

Thanks for taking a look,

David

[Kraellin]

this is indeed bad, but not impossible. the biggest problem is time. this is the type that a restorer would have to charge a large price to handle and do just to break even and most folks dont want to pay that kind of money for something like this. however, if you're doing it yourself, i had a good first step result using psp's 'local tone mapping' set to maximum. following that with a curves gave even more clarity. oh, and i had to convert this to 8 bit rgb first.

but, to get much better from there is going to be a lot of cloning, airbrush and smudge/push.

there is some good news, though. a stereogram being the same image repeated side by side, you can draw data from each side where it's missing or damaged on the other and fix the first. thus, where one part is damaged on one side, you can draw data from the other to fix it.

it's still going to be a lot of work and isnt going to end up like new. and, like repairman said, it's going to be a case of going from really bad to something a bit better.

[customdavid]

Craig -

Thanks for the comments. I may just have to let it go then. It would be nice to see more, but I would really like to get to something that was really good, and it just does not seem that this is possible. I have several thousand others that I have to work with and while this image is important historically I don't think I have the time/resources to devote to a single image when so many others are also calling to me and have the ability to be nicely restored.

Thanks to everyone for your time,

David

[stereokatt]

Originally Posted by Kraellin

... a stereogram being the same image repeated side by side, you can draw data from each side where it's missing or damaged on the other and fix the first.

No. A stereo image is not made up of the same image repeated side by side, it's made up of two similar, but different, images, just as each eye sees a slightly different image. A stereo camera has lenses separated by a few inches, usually. Or a stereo view can be taken with a single-lens camera by taking one shot and then moving the camera horizontally for the second. If someone used parts of one image in the other, that area would then look "flat" when viewed in a stereoscope. It would be better than doing nothing in a badly damaged image, but it would certainly take away from the "stereo" effect.

[customdavid]

stereokatt is exactly correct. When I restore images I try to take as little as possible from the opposite image. Sometimes I need to when something like a hand or piece of face is missing, but I only do as little as possible and I keep moving my reference point when cloning so that it will line up in the other image. An easy way to get an idea of how this works is to look at an object 8-10 feet away such as a door frame or window. Close one eye and hold up a finger. Move your finger so that it is perfectly in line with the vertical part of the door or window then without moving your finger switch which eye you have closed. Instantly you will see that your perspective is different.

You have to study it closely when looking at images but you will see some obvious signs of the stereo effect. You may see more or less of a chair, arm, leg in one image than another. If you look and see that in one image that you could draw a line between two points and you can not do that in the other.

I like to add clouds in my images for more realism. When I do I have to shift the horizontal alignment on one side to get the cloud to look right. You might be able to use cloning from the opposite side to produce a better 2D image, but I would lose my goal of producing a 3D image.

On another note. A few people have asked me why this image is important. This is from Gettysburg and shows dead being buried at Rose farm in July 1863. There is a series of images that were all taken from the same location and then over the years was misidentified as being from various places, various units (North and South) and the history at one point was lost. William Frassanito (who I met this past October) began interest in the site when he was 14 and became an official guide in college. He discovered over years of research that these photo's were all of the same individuals and was able to prove it on paper several years before found the location. He published "Gettysburg: A Journey In Time" in the mid 70's documenting this and many other findings (including the location of the 3 Confederate prisoners, etc.) This image is part of that series.

There are several similar images with extreme damage that I have downloaded. Fortunately there are hundreds of others that are in fairly great shape, I was just hoping to do something with this one due to it's history.

[Repairman]

I had a quick look using my Quantel paintbox, which has some tools my Macs don't, but didn't really come up anything other than confirmation that it seems to be beyond realistic repair. Loved your civil war website David.
R.

http://s691.photobucket.com/albums/v...t=CIVILWAR.jpg

Question - How do we share decent hi rez files without them being jpegged too much. I just had a look at my link and the file has lost some some punch somewhere. Can we post tiffs?

ps. I'll email it to your civilwar site if there is an email address.

[customdavid]

Repairman -

Wow, that was great. Still don't think it is ready to restore, but I can see stuff!!!

Thanks for your feedback on my Civil War site. I will send you a private message with my email.

David

[Kraellin]

ok guys, thanks for the corrections about stereograms. i guess i sort of knew that but it's been a while.

repairman, most members are limited to 100k per image here. patrons get 200k per. even we moderators can only post 200k per. but, you can post on a site like imageshack in a much larger size and then post the address to that pic here. if do that, please post the lower res image here so if the remote site image gets deleted we still have a reference image so folks can follow the thread.

[Repairman]

Thanks Kraellin - I'll get the hang of it in time. Meanwhile CustomDavid and I have been using email in order to view the picture without excessive jpeg artifacting. I'll give Imageshack a try!
R.

[Kraellin]

you're welcome.

imageshack is one of the best for this. they dont spam you to death with ads and are set up for this sort of stuff and allow a fairly large size image. it's a nice service.

[Odhin]

I felt like spending a short time on this. Mostly dust/scratches, curves, spot healing. At least you can see which bodies are duplicates.

http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/9987/00071a.jpg

[Cupcake]

Here is another try.