old pic

short243 · #1 12-06-2003, 08:26 PM

Hi,
I'm new to this forum and also to restoration but am really interrested and am fascinated with the whole idea.
I have an old picture taken in between 1900 and 1910.I have been playing with it and have made progress but to be honest it,s kinda slim.
Since taking up this project I brought PS7 and a book by Katrin Eismann ( which helped ). I will upgrade to PSCS after Christmas . The picture is my wife dad and his siblings, all since gone, the picture was discovered in a concave frame and a picture taken of it with a digital camera since putting it in a scanner was not an option,getting it out of the frame was easy but being in it for 90-100 years I was afraid to try to hard to flatten it.
The light areas (not sure of proper term) around the subjects ,specificlly getting rid of it has been especially troublesum. Ya know I think I'm gonna like this place.

Paris · #2 12-06-2003, 09:31 PM

Hi,
As one newbie to another, welcome.

Don't know if this helps...

Duplicated image. Added a Hue/Saturation layer, selected Blue from the dropdown menu and slid the Saturation and Lightness sliders all the way to the left. This left spots of blue through image. Selected the Add to selection eyedropper (middle one) and clicked on one of the still visible blue spots removing the remaining spots from the image as well as some of the brightness you are concerned about.

Still with Hue/Saturation open, selected Master from the drop down and slid the Saturation to -50 to kill some of the green that appeared after the blue adjustment. Merged Adjustment layer down.

This method also helped highlight some of the fine details in the image.

Don't know if this helps - I'm new at this, too.

** Paris **

short243 · #3 12-07-2003, 06:32 AM

Hi,
Thanks Paris. I had been going at it the hard way. I have in another copy used layers to try bringinng out some detail, especially in the girl on the left and the lower right. I've been playing around with this only a very short time.
Any other help would be greatly appreciated, trying to bring back pictures is just so darn addictive for a newby. I hope to have it done for Christmas but do seem to stumble and bumble quite a lot.

Vikki · #4 12-07-2003, 08:29 AM

Boy, this really has a lot of digital artifacts. Is this the actual image you're working on?
Hopefully, you have a higher quality image...if so, can you post it here?
Vikki

rondon · #5 12-07-2003, 10:40 AM

Yup!... miss Vicky is right about those "artifacts" was it something you've done? It may have been that you saved it at some point as jpeg at less than 100% .. 100% means no compression... the artifacts look like they may have been caused by compression..

removing those artifacts will require a loss of "information" as it's called... and will degrade the work right from the start... try a search here on " artifacts" or "Jpeg artifacts" .. You'll probably find ways of removing them but the best thing is not to acquire them in the 1st place...

my attachment is mostly to suggest what can be done at some point with the clone stamp tool set on "multiply.... use a low opacity.. say 10% ... with a soft (fuzzy) brush.

a very usefull tool for all sorts of stuff..

anyhow..... looks like it will be an interesting project.... scan hi res then reduce the image with IMAGE/IMAGE SIZE if needed.

RonDon

short243 · #6 12-07-2003, 10:48 AM

Hi,
I really shrunk the file to down load, I'll try it upsized to as close to the limit as possible. The orginal is in pretty bad shape, really faded and has almost no resolution. Notice the eyes, near the bottom it's hard to see the fingers or any detail really, and that's in the orginal. I did use a P&S 3meg,( hope to get a DSLR 1st of year ) but they turned out ok. It's an uphill battle but kinda fun too

.

Ed_L · #7 12-07-2003, 03:27 PM

The light areas you are referring to look like "silvering". I think there is a tutorial, or maybe a tip or two (on this site) on scanning or restoring this type of image. I didn't do anything with the image, but I did download it to check out the individual channels. The red channel is by far, much better than the green or blue. This should be the first thing to check when you have a problem image. Hope this helps a little. Welcome aboard to both short243 and Paris.

Ed

Duv · #8 12-07-2003, 07:23 PM

It's oftern useful to make 2 duplicates, one for CMYK and the other for LAB. Go into the channels of each to see where the most detail is. You can then blend a percentage of that channel into a weaker channel but for now just find the channel with the most detail and convert to greyscale. For me I thought the Cyan channel in CMYK had the most information to work with.

Cheers
Duv