Impossible restoration

[Hankster65]

I've been away from restoration for awhile (been concentrating on photography) but still occasionally dabble. Yesterday a friend brought me this image and asked if I could restore it for an elderly friend of hers. Seems the young fellow pictured was very dear to her "many, many years ago." She has kept this image all those years. Apparently its an old tintype. I know virtually nothing about old photographic media, but, it seems to be made from tin so this my assumption. Its very bent up which makes getting a good scan all the more difficult. (No way am I going to attempt straightening it!)

Anyway, this image is VERY dark. Its only about an inch wide and with the naked eye you can barely discern that it is a picture of a person. After a levels adjustment I was horrified to see cracks, cracks, and more cracks. I'm thinking all I can do is levels and some very basic restoration and print it.

Posting it here in case there have been some incredible breakthroughs in technique since I've been away, but, mostly because I thought folks here might find it interesting.

[Xaran]

Can you post a larger copy of the full image, having the close up in the same file means we get less of the full image to work on.

Christine

[roger_ele]

Take a photo of it under natural diffused light with a digital camera - or find someone to do it for you. You will be amazed at the difference. Bracket your exposures as you will need 1 to 2 stops more exposure than incident or grey card meter readings will give you.

Roger

[Mike]

I think the camera idea is the best, would use double polorized light instead of the diffused, as it appears that there is some silvering in the image.

Mike

[12fretter]

I took a shot at this while listening to Hannity and Colmes tonight. Don't know how much quality you pro's can get out of this, but this took about 30 minutes.

[Hankster65]

I really appreciate the input from everyone! This forum is the greatest.

I had a little time today to shoot a digital pic of it and I think that may, in fact, be the best way to go. I hadn't thought of trying that. I need to play a little with getting the light right.

Christine, I'll be glad to post a better sample of it. I just scanned this site's FAQ and didn't see what file size limitations there are now. Hope this one is OK.

Fritter12, that's a great shot at it! I'm very impressed. Maybe there is some hope for this shot afterall. Thanks!

[roger_ele]

I agree that double polarizing is the best way to go, but if you don't have those resources availible to you, difused is a good second choice and will be way better than scanning. Try a black card with a hole cut in it for the lens to stick through to minimize reflections if there is any. Or in stead of a black card do it 4 or 5 feet in from a window which just sees sky so that what is above/behind the camera is a lot darker than the light source to minimize reflections. In this lower light you will need to use a tripod or use a table to steady the camera => push a table up against a wall, lean the photo agaist the wall, set the camera on the table at an appropriate distance, focus, push down on the camera and squeeze the shutter release slowly or use the self timer.

Roger

[roger_ele]

Hi Tim,

We cross posted. That looks good, try more exposure on the camera (you will get less noise with more exposure in the camera instead of lightening it up in Photoshop) and blocking more light coming from the cameras direction. Maybe take a flashlight and move it around to determine the angles that need to be blocked - it is hard to see since the original is so dark and the reflections are subtle until the increase in exposure makes everthing too easy to see.

Roger

[Flora]

Hi Tim,

I'm sure you solved your problem with Roger's advice and tips ... I wish I had the know-how to correct problems from the very beginning!!!

...But just for fun ... I had to try the 'impossible restoration' ....

It involved a rather long restoration 'procedure' .... so .... it might not be worthwhile if you are doing this professionally .... but it's not 'impossible' ...

P.S. I restored the young man's head only ... didn't touch anything else.

[ajcutler]

Outstanding!

Alan

[cedwar]

OK Flora, lets get this out of the way... that's fantastic!

Now can you explain a little how you did it? I thought I might have an idea when I tried it... I only worked on the face, like you did. I blurred the image, then took a snapshot of it and undid the blur. Then using the history brush after selecting the blurred snapshot as the source, I brushed in the blur and made the face look pretty good.

However, Im wondering how you did it, and how you get the edges so clear and smooth, especially the lips, eyes and hair!

Any explaination you can give will be golden.

...cedwar

[Hankster65]

I apologize for not responding here sooner. I got called out of town unexpectantly to house sit.

Flora, you have long amazed me, but, I've never been more amazed than when I saw your results on this one. I am totally in awe. I have absolutely no idea how you did that. Its a beautiful piece of work...I do know that.

This started as a little side job to pick up a few bucks. I can't do it justice, so I'm just going to print the best I've got and give it to the little old lady gratis. Then she can go on dreaming about the young man who got away all those many years ago!

Thanks to all who responded.

And once again, Flora, I'm absolutely in awe.

[Flora]

Hi everybody!

Sorry for getting back to this so late ... but I was busy moving ..... ... Still can't find anything at the first try, but my computer is up and running, finally got my DSL connection back ... in other words I've started feeling 'at home!'

Wow ... thank you all for your great comments and kindness!!!!!

What I did with this picture is the following:

Cracks

• Duplicated the Background Layer

• Created a Levels Adjustment Layer and increased the shadows' contrast (Input Levels: 6 - 0.86 - 255).

• Merged visible. (remember the tip about merging without losing the underlying Layers?)

• Duplicated the Layer, desaturated it (Ctrl+Shift+U), inverted it (Ctrl+I) and set the blending to Overlay (Opacity 100%).

• Merged visible.

• Run Adjustment>Replace Color and, with the 'Add to Picker' selected the darkesr streaks in the young man's face ... played with (increased) Lightness and Fuzziness until I got an acceptable result.

The cracks had faded but the whole image was kind of darkish 'flat' ... to make it come alive I

• Clicked on the 'Channels' Tab, selected and duplicated the Red Channel, run the levels on the duplicate to increase the contrast and, keeping the Ctrl key pressed, I clicked on the adjusted, duplicated Red Channel to select its 'luminosity'.

• With the selection still active, I clicked back to the composite view and the layers Palette.

• Ctrl+J pasted the selection on its own Layer changing the Blending to 'Linear Dodge'.

• Duplicated the 'Selection Layer' changing the Blending to 'Soft Light'.

• Merged visible.

Now the image was brighter... I had a nice contrast and could start with the restoration.

• Duplicated the Layer, run Gaussian blur until the 'cracks had become 'darkish spots', added some noise, added a Layer mask (Hide All) and with a fuzzy white brush (Opacity 80 - 20% (around eyes, nose and mouth)), painted over the young man face and neck.

From this point onwards I created several new empty Layers (Blendings: Lighten, Darken, Screen, Soft Light, Overlay) to correct, minimize and enhance different parts of the picture individually.

Hair

For the hair, I didn't do anything else than creating a new empty Layer on top of all the others and 'combing' it with the 'Smudge Tool' using a 'dotty' brush ... Slightly blurred and played with the Opacity of the Smudge Layer...

Hope this helps....

[cedwar]

I have a suggestion for a new Forum, it's called...

Professor Flora's Photoshop Techniques

You could have lessons that range from beginner to professional+++
You could have weekly quizzes and tests each month.
Required reading would be every post she has ever posted.

Whaddya think everyone?

...Cedwar

[Gary Richardson]

After looking at the image above, I'll subscribe for some lessons, but I suspect that I'm going to be trampled in the stampede.