hard core crackling . . .

[2mittsphotog]

Working on a restoration here that has some serious crackling taking place across the entire print. I'm used to handling a few folds/wrinkles etc, but this is more pervasive than anything I've tackled before.

After not quite getting there with dust and scratches, I played with the "quick de-crackle" tutorial/action with so so results. That technique is certainly more controllable than the d/s filter, but it's not quite going far enough (and I've really pushed the settings and tweaked the authors settings as per his instruction).

Curious if anyone could guide me down the right path. Skill level is fairly high, so feel free to throw terms around.

Much thanks!

[mistermonday]

Frequency separation and on the High Frequency layer, use of the Spot Healing Brush with Content Aware option checked, and the regular healing brush also on the HF layer, may prove to be an effective method for you.
Regards, Murray

[chillin]

Murray is right, but if you would like some OK results in 5 minutes you could create a mask, in this case from High Freq. Blue Channel, placing below a black layer & applying linear light blending. Above it place a level adjustments layer & enhance the cracks, merge all. Copy the mask & attached to the HF clipped layer (blend normal) to an HF layer of your pic. Paint all on the HF(blend normal) with a (in this case) 62,62,62 tone. next, merge all & apply any noise reduction method + sharpening.

[dkcoats]

Chillin -

I like your result but you lost me somewhere in your instructions.

[AKMac]

Hi

If you want a quick technique which may be effective for certain areas of the image, you could try the following.

Duplicate the layer
Put it into Darken Blend Mode
Select the Move tool
Nudge the layer sideways with the keyboard arrows

This may be helpful for this image because
a/The cracks are all lighter, so darken mode should only affect them
b/The general sweep of the image is horizontal, so the horizontal nudge shouldn't cause too much of a "double image" effect.

I'm not suggesting for one minute that this will work for every part of the image, so you may want to use a layer mask to remove those areas where it is less successful.

regards

AKMacNewall

[atholg]

Just completed an image with the same sort of problem, because the edges of the cracks were raised they showed up as an abrupt bright to dark transition when scanned.

Scanned the photo twice at 1200ppi, the second time inverted. Placed on top of each other and aligned using difference mode, then switched the upper layer to darken.

Only a small amount of additional repair necessary.

A

[2mittsphotog]

Lots of good techniques there folks, thank you! Think I'm going to start with atholg's technique first (since I'm dealing with exactly the problem he described), see where i get and then look into using some of these other techniques. Thank you so much everyone for the feedback and I'll post my results here when i get a chance.

[2mittsphotog]

Doing the "Scan flipped image/align/darken layer" method recommended was a step in the right direction, but i can't seem to eliminate the left overs without a serious time commitment with the clone/healing/etc techniques. Looking at chillin's result (which i missed upon my initial reading) i was impressed. I think I'm following most of the steps and am going to give that a go. Thanks again to everyone!

Edit- I'm with dkcoats here . . . needing a bit more explanation. Thought I could interpret the instructions, but I'm getting lost pretty darn quick. lol . .

[chillin]

This might help.
For better results you could experiment with the brush's gray tone.

[2mittsphotog]

Thanks for posting those screen shots chillin! They were certainly helpful for most of the technique, but I'm still stuck on what your masking back in exactly. Your instructions say to "Copy the mask & attached to the HF clipped layer (blend normal) to an HF layer of your pic." I'm needing a bit more clarification on this. Thanks for any further assistance, learning alot over here

[chillin]

#1 is the High Frequency layer (blending mode linear light)
#2 is a copy of the High Frequency layer, placed above the High Frequency layer & clipped to it (blending mode normal)
#3 is a created mask from a High frequency layer of the blue channel.

[2mittsphotog]

My apologize for not picking up on the "clipped" layer part, lol . . think i was a bit tired not to have followed. In any case, all makes sense now and I'm having some success. Just need to tweak my my mask a bit but i can see potential already! Thank you again for all your guidance, is hugely appreciated!