Small Wallet Photos

[eegee]

I have three photos that I have scanned. The original photos are small so there is some distortion in the larger scanned versions. The photos have also been kept in a wallet inside a plastic sleeve for some time, so this adds to the anomalies in the image.

I have worked on the first photo. I would like to hear some comments on the final product as to whether it still looks realistic. I am an amateur in photo restoration and this is my second attempt.

I would like to ask for some assistance with the other two photos. I will try work on the second one tomorrow if I have time. I have found that it can be quite time consuming restoring photos.

I hope it is all right to post the links to the photos in a ".txt"? I know it is a bit cumbersome to get the links to the photos that way, but at least I get to post a larger image and I also get a little privacy from the web spiders.

[Florin]

Hi. Cannot see your pics there. Try to upload in mediafire.com, it's fine for free 30 days storage.

[mistermonday]

Florin, the links are provided as text in a simple text document. If you right click and Save As to your PC when you double click it, it should open in Notepad or any text editor you have. You will then need to copy and paste the links into your browser.
Regards, Murray

[eegee]

Originally Posted by Florin

Hi. Cannot see your pics there. Try to upload in mediafire.com, it's fine for free 30 days storage.

Have you come right Florin? Murray is absolutely correct with regards to needing to open the file in any text editor and copying the links into your browser. I hope that solves your problem, unless it is the image hosting site I chose?

[eegee]

I have have finished working on the other two photos and made some slight changes to the first photo. I would really appreciate any comments.

[Florin]

K, now I have deen the pics, thanks Murray. When I copied/pasted the links from the .txt the browser indicated "blocked account"

0k, you've been using only plgins? Any other technique?

[eegee]

Ah, that account blocked message happens when you are not logged into ImageShack. It is something new they introduced recently. I have now uploaded the pictures to MediaFire as you suggested.

scan.jpg
1.jpg
2.jpg
3.jpg 

I am not sure what you mean by only using plugins. I used the spot-healing tool and clone tool in Photoshop.

[Florin]

K. First of all, NEVER scan the pictures together because you are supposed to work each of them individually. Then, they are very small size and a lot of damages. This means that you (or someone else) will need to zoom in a lot. Healing tool is great but in this size (purple chick is 2.8x3.5 cm) will not help too much. If you'll zoom to 100%, you'll see no textures at all, mean no hair, skin, clothes texture, neither the paper texture, just some flat colors and shapes. We need these textures, my friend, they are part of the show That's why I asked if you've been using some plugin, seems to me that some blur filter was applied.
K, now, you'll need to scan again them, one by one at least 1200 dpi. Do it in the manual mode and be sure that your hardware (scanner) does not apply any kind of mask or plugin. I'm saying that because my old Acer does have different modes, natural, magazine, newspaper, sharpened/unsharpened etc. Leave all controls as default. I'd like to help you with some advices about techniques and workflow but with a better original image. Thank you

[eegee]

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately my uncle has gone away for the weekend. When I am able to get a hold of the photos, I will scan them like you requested.

[eegee]

Hi Florin. I have scanned the photos in 9600dpi but I resized them to 1920 width since they were too big for me to upload. I hope the images better now.

http://www.mediafire.com/?b0f1bxe7cnzmldr
http://www.mediafire.com/?38js4hlk9ukcioz
http://www.mediafire.com/?03w3vaf3uxy4s67

[Florin]

Hi. Ok, this is different, helps a lot the work. I'm downloading them and have a look. Thank you for your time

[Florin]

Well, there is a lot of work here, the pictures are so damaged. Unfortunately they need an advanced level of skilness and enough working time. I doubt the plugins could help a lot here.
I made the #3 scan eyes, nose and face retouch, this one is the less complicated. You could go on with this start. I only used the curves to enhance and the clone tool, dodge and burn brushes for the retouch.
Here is your file:
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?01gg12b4g8650uj
Sorry to do so little but I have 3 jobs to deliver for this week and not too much time.
Regards,
Florin

[darield]

Florin your work is beautiful. I am posting an attempt I made on the first wallet. I worked on just a small area on the left side. I worked on the first photo because it was so damaged and I wanted a chance to learn from this. I noticed in my attempt, that my hair line became muddled and blurred, so on this type of restoration, how does one keep the hair looking more realistic? Also to start, I found a small area above the eye where I could use a 3 pxl size brush and continue making a larger area so I could increase the brush size. On the first photo, is there a better place to start? For me, making that decision is one of the hardest decisions.

If someone else wants to chime in, that would be great. Florin, since you posted a small sample, that's why this post is directed at you. Since you are so busy this week, if you have time next week, I would love to learn from this sample also.

Thanks.

[Florin]

Dariel, hi. I always insist on the high resolution inportance whenever you'll start the work. This is so logical, try to draw or write anything over a small piece of paper, 3x4 cm. Then, take a full letter size paper and do the same. You'll enjoy whaterver you're doing, working confortably and with all the required details. This is the first step.
The second one is duplicate the background, save the file as .psd, hide (the "eye") the superior layer and begin to retouch the background image. This way you'll be able to compare in any moment if you are going wright or wrong. The bad araes are so difficult to retouch and it's so easy to make some mistake. I have another habit too, I'm saving snapshots and marking history points when I'm doing something fine so, if I screw something later I'm able to redo it quickly.
The most difficult part of this #3 sample will be the hair, it will take much more time and must be retouched with slim brushes, cloning or painting the hair's dark or clear lines.
Our friend eegee have upload some new high resolution scans. I put mine to 1cm wide because 0.53cm was too small and worked fine. Do the same with yours one.
If I'll have some little time I'll try to help with the eyes of your sample. You are right, always start with the eyes. Clean a little around and begin to retouch them, one by one.
I must go to school now, I'll be back this night.
Regards, F

[eegee]

Florin, I just got back from a long day. I took a quick look at your upload and it looks amazing so far. I hope I get a chance tomorrow to read your posts in detail and comment on them.

darield, thanks for also helping. Likewise, I will read your post tomorrow and provide a better comment.

[philbach]

Well I usually start restoring the color first. So on your scan one I used levels on each of the channels and then after that I increased the saturation slightly.

To work on the face, I started using the healing brush tool on a very small area of her left cheek that looked ok. I then increased the area I was healing from and started across her face.

Doing it that way is tedious, but the advantage is that there is still some texture after the repair.

[Cupcake]

Here is my try with Painter 11 and CS5.

[eegee]

Long day again for me, but I'll make some time to reply.

@Florin, thanks for offering to help. There is no time limit on restoring the photos, since my uncle already used the previous version I uploaded in post #7. What I did to reduce the blurriness in the images, was crop them to a 4:3 ratio and then resize them to 500px height.

I am quite interested in how you and the others are tackling this problem. It will definitely help me if I need to do something similar to this again. I am also sure my uncle will be happy down the line when I show him a better version.

@darield, I see this as a learning experience too. I also am curious in keeping the photo realistic. I find that if I use the healing-tool or clone too much it looks odd, but the way Florin did the one part of the photo looks clean and smooth.

@philbach, I do not really know how to use the levels properly. I should probably read up on it sometime. I just used combinations of the different auto-* in PS and hoped for the best.

@Cupcake, the image looks nice. It has got an digitally artistic feel to it. I also like the frame you added. Did you completely redraw the image?

...side note: I have assignments due for next week and the following week so most likely I will not be able to comment often, if at all. After that I should have time again. Till later.

[darield]

Well, I think my second attempt has the skin a little smoother and the eye more realistic. Still haven't quite figured out the hair and the smoothness of the skin still could use work.

[Memory_Restorer]

Hi. I normally lurk around the forums, and I know this is a slightly outdated thread, but I decided to have a go at the first of your three wallet-sizes. I think it turned out well.

What I ended up doing in Photoshop CS5 was creating a temporary "B&W" layer. Since most of the noise was yellow, I turned the yellow channel all the way up to white. This way, I could easily see the yellow stains against her skin. From there, I basically sat and made judicious use of the spot healing tool. This worked for the right side of her face, but there was so much yellow "noise" on the left side of her face that I ended up copying the right half of her face, flipped it, then warped it to match the dimensions of the left half. (That was probably the most time consuming part. I'm still not 100% sure I'm happy with it.) I basically did the same thing with the sweater, except that there was enough contrast on the sweater that I didn't need the B&W layer, and once I had a suitable area of textured material clear, I made use of the "patch" tool.

Obviously, I also fixed the levels, etc. You could probably play around with that some more if you want, but I had a problem with it wanting to oversaturate on the sweater.

Any ideas on how to improve this would be greatly appreciated, as I'm always looking to improve my skills!