I am stuck

[beruli]

hello all, I am a new forum member, but I have been a follower for some time. I have been trying to restore a photo from the late 30's, I cannot seem to get the picture to look right, I thought you all might be able to help me out. Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

[beruli]

I forgot to add, that when i change the levels to keep picture more black and white, there appears to be a stain or some kind of odd color going through the photo, its hard to describe.

[amica999]

Hi and welcome to RetouchPro, my friend. It would definitely help our members to help you if you indicate what kind of programs you have available for photo editing :-)

[beruli]

Yes, that would be beneficial wouldn't it, I am using Adobe Photoshop CS5.

[John Wheeler]

Hi beruli

Amica is right, it would help to know which program you are using. To be honest, it looks like you have done a great job and most of the hard work already.

If all you are looking for is how to change the levels and have good color there are many ways to do this whether Photoshop, Elements and others.

Here was a quick try that I did to give you some ideas
- Put Levels adjustment Layer on top of image and use Auto (yes you might want to tune this in)
- Use a B&W layer on top and I turned down the red a little bit (yet is just looks like grayscale right now)
- Add a solid color layer of a layer filled with one color. I sample the brown color of the original layer to do this. Then set this Layer to blend of Color.

Hope that gives you some ideas

Click on Thumbnail
Screen-shot-2011-12-10-at-7.33SWF.jpg

[beruli]

Thanks for the reply, i try what you said, and it turned out well, i was wondering, how did you sample fro m the original picture, all i could do was get an approximation by using my eye, but then when i tried that the picture came out very washed out and not clear at all.

[John Wheeler]

Hi beruli
I can't remember if I sampled just the original image or the after the Levels Adjustment Layer was applied. I did sample the brownish color on the door with the eyedropper tool to set the foreground swatch/chip. The sample size was either 5x5 or 11x11 (not a point sample). Clearly you don't have to stick with a sampled color, you can change the value with the color picker to whatever gives you the feel you want in the image.

If you are still having issue, it might help to have a cut and paste of your layer stack where you are trying to implement this technique. Hope this is useful.

[Tony W]

Hi beruli
You said in your first post you are trying to 'restore' a photograph. If that is the case and you want to get it to look as the original did in the 30's I believe that the sepia treatment is incorrect for this image as it was likely printed without toning.

I think that the overall colour cast is actually staining caused by improper washing of the original print way back. If you just do an auto correction in levels you will see the main problem areas highlighted (prints probably stuck to each other in the wash cycle) eventually this has spread over the whole image.

It may be of course that you feel that a degree of sepia tone or just a slight warming of the black is appropriate

[beruli]

Yeah, i noticed that when i used auto some went black and white and the rest looked like there was a stain on the photo. Going back over the photo, i really like it in black and white, it gives it a better feel.

[plugsnpixels]

What Tony said. I don't think our ancestors were looking at sepia-colored prints in their day. That happened to the prints later. So if you are trying to be historically accurate, lose the tone. If you want a sense of false nostalgia (like period movies with muted colors and diffusion, ha!), have fun with the effects.

[Kraellin]

i took your worked-on picture and did a simple 3-step process, fade control, hue/sat desaturation, and digital camera noise removal, all in paint shop pro 4. i'm not sure what the photoshop equivalents are, but for fade control you might try tone mapping or shadows/midtones/highlights and on the noise reduction, whatever noise reducer they're using these days.

one note on the noise reduction... it tends to smudge. i opted for a compromise on this image between the smudging and the noise for the sake of speed. if you wanted better and were willing to put the time to it, you could go the clone route to maintain the proper textures.

[JAYKAT]

Wow Kraellin that is Remarkable work!!! Nicely Done!!!!!

[beruli]

Thanks Kraellin, I haver used that tool before, i am finding it hard to find a balance between luminance, luminance detail, and luminance contrast, i don't know what its like in paint shop pro, but in cs5 i can't seem to get anywhere, it all looks the same to me when i start adjusting the levels.

[beruli]

In the end this is what I came up with.

[Cupcake]

Here is what i did,
noise removal
texture linen added