Remove photopaper texture from old photo

[Vespeera]

Is there a way to remove the texture from an old photo that is part of the texture of the paper, and yet retain sharp details? The texture is a pattern seen in many old photographs. You may not see it in the photo.. and I have made the main photo smaller to upload here (you can see it there). larger version available if needed.

Any advice and assistance is appreciated.

[Duv]

Hi Vespeera

Welcome to RetouchPro! It's pretty hard not to lose at least a little detail but with your pic, I masked the eyes and mouth and applied small increments of Neat Image. With the mask still in place I applied a Gaussian Blur, just enough so I could still see just a bit of texture. Very carefully with a blur brush, I worked the eyes and mouth. Flora's better at this kind of stuff but I hope this helps.

Cheers
Dave

[Vespeera]

Hi Dave, thank you for the welcome! I did a search for Neat Image and found it. From your description, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to remove this texture (I am not too experienced with with graphics). If Neat Image is the way to go, what part, or filter of the Neat Image program did you use, and can something similar be done in Photoshop (besides the masking)?

[Mark Adams]

I have a smilar issue. My cousin passed away last month and the best photo they could find for her memorial site was a farily recent photo of her which was originally a two-shot of her with her ex-husband. They had removed his image and then printed her photo against a (*caugh* chessy) background on textured paper.

I cleaned it up as best I could, but it's low res and I'm not terribly good at it. Anybody want to try their hand at it?

[Ken Fournelle]

Vespeera,

If you don't have Neat Image as Duv suggests try the Blur tool set at about 75% strength. Use a smaller brushe for the eye area. I used an empty layer with an overlay blending mode to paint over the features ala Flora and finished with USM

K

[Flora]

Hi Vespeera

Welcome to RP!

Great help from Dave and Ken!! (if you haven't done it already, you can download the free version od Neat Image here

I had a go at your picture and used a combination of PS Gaussian Blur and Neat Image trying to minimize the texture without smoothing too much and losing too many details.

• I duplicated the Background Layer twice.
• On the first duplicate I run Neat Image (defaul settings).
• On the second duplicate (on top) I run Gaussian Blur, added some noise and adjusted its Opacity. I, then, added a Layer Mask and, with a soft black brush, I painted over eyes, nose and mouth to uncover those sharper features from the underlying 'Neat Image' Layer.
• Merged Visible.
• Created a Levels Adjustment Layer to improve contrast.
• Created a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer (colorize option checked) to give a light tint to the picture.
• Added a little Noise + Soft Gaussian Blur (radius = 0.3-5).
• Created a New empty Layer > Blending Overlay and with a soft black/white Brush (Opacity 10-20%) I painted over areas I wanted to emphisize/highlight.
• I further enhanced the contrast using Unsharp Mask (Amount>20%, Radius>50, Threshold>0).
• I finally sharpened the image using USM.

Hope this helps...

[Vespeera]

Wow! I am very impressed with those results Flora, thank you. And thanks to Dave and Ken too. I will try these methods. Thank you all for your excellent help. This site is a treasure!

[suchyy]

WOW, I am really impressed. I tried to do something similiar with Floras instructions but I was only able to achieve something like in attachment.

It would be nice if you could show us some step-by-step pictures I do not know what i did wrong.

[Flora]

Hi everybody,

thanks for the great feedback!

suchyy,

Great result! ... I'm sure you didn't do anything 'wrong' ... you might have remained a bit too 'soft' in the blurring/Neat image settings .... You could try to use the 'Blur Tool' (adjusting Tool and Layer Opacity) on the areas which still show some of the original texture.

Mark,

...resolution and size wern't the best to work on... but I had a try at your picture as well, using more or less the same technique for minimizing the texture ...

[Mark Adams]

Thanks Flora. Your version looks very good. I'm going to have to go back to that image and see if I can't get radical on it. The size and resolution were not good. I wrote my other cousin (the decedent's sister) about getting me a copy of the original but I never got any reply. Even if she had been able to get me an original, I don't think it was much bigger or better.

I just wonder if somebody didn't hack the retouch and print it on textured paper to help hide the shortcomings.

Again thanks, you did a terrific job.

[Manjumena]

Made a dup copy
selected each channel> Gauss.blur>Noice>median>USM

[Flora]

Mark,

thanks for your great feedback and so glad you liked my version of your picture!

I just wonder if somebody didn't hack the retouch and print it on textured paper to help hide the shortcomings.

.... If somebody did that .... they'll never admit it ....

Manjumena,

Great job in removing the texture .... a bit too soft in the details .... maybe...

[Duv]

Since we're all here to learn, I decided to have another go using much of Flora's superb technique although I did have to mask out the eyes and mouth and work a little more on careful blurring and sharpening. In any case, I think you'll agree that it is far superior to my first effort thanks to Flora.
Flora, luv to see a tut from you on this detailing more precisely what you did.

Cheers
Dave

[Vespeera]

Good job Dave! I agree, a precise tutorial on removing photo-texture paper with details and pictures would be great, but I am grateful for the instructions already given. It would be nice to be able to do it without Neatimage though. There is little I can find on the web about this, hence my question here. You guys/gals are wonderful!

[Flora]

Dave,

Great job!!!!! ....

Originally Posted by Duv

Since we're all here to learn...

I learn from everyone and every picture I work on .... That's the magic of RP!!!

Vespeera,

..... I was trying to sneak out of writing a tutorial ....
Could I use your picture (it's just perfect for it) to write one?
Thanks in advance ....

[Vespeera]

Could I use your picture (it's just perfect for it) to write one?

Flora, The photo does not belong to me, and unfortunately I can't get permission from the owner of the photo for a tutorial, only for this question, which to my view is like a tutorial anyway.

[Flora]

Hi Vespeera,

No problem ....I'll look at what I have ... or maybe, someone here has a similar picture I could use ....

[imrtun]

You might want to take a look at this http://gimel.esc.cam.ac.uk/james/resources/undither/

Not figured out how to get it working yet but the results look impressive! Help would be greatly appreciated

[Flora]

Is it something you can download and try?

Does it work as 'stand alone' or plug-in?

....Yes, the results do look impressive!!!!

Thanks for the link!!!

[imrtun]

That's what I'm not sure of Flora! I think you need to download something else to get that to work, it does mention http://www.fftw.org/ but it all seems very complicated. I'll keep sifting through the information though as it looks very useful if you can get it working.

Let's hope that someone else here can shed some light on it for us

[FrannyMae]

Flora, I have a perfect image you are free to use for a tutorial. It is a picture of my mother and the only major problem with it is the honeycomb texture. I have been fairly successful using my new scanner to get rid of the texture but I would be more than happy to get the original/unaltered scan to you. I have posted the scan below. The attachment is only 100k of course, but you can see the texture quite easily. If you would like to use this for a tut just let me know how to get it to you (what size, resolution, format, etc.) I can FTP or e-mail up to 10MB.

I added a cropped version so the texture is more visible.

[Flora]

Hi FrannyMae,

What a beautiful lady!!!!!

Thank you so much .... your mother's picture is just perfect!!!! Even if only 100kb it's very clear and, as you said, 'you can see the texture quite easily' ... I'll start working on the tutorial immediately and let you know as soon as it's up...

Thanks again ...

Take care.

[FrannyMae]

Flora, I'm glad you'll be able to use the picture. She was a very lovely lady and this is one of only two picture I have of her as a young lady. Luckily they have both been well cared for (compared to some I have seen!) I do plan on working on this one myself and enlarging from the original 3x5 to possibly 8x10...wish me luck!

[Flora]

FrannyMae, I'm sure you'll do a beautiful job!!!!

If you'd like to exchange techniques, methods etc. , please don't hesitate to contact me...

I'd really love to see your end result!!!

[byRo]

Originally Posted by imrtun

.....but it all seems very complicated...

This stuff is from the rocket science end of image processing. To use these programs you'd have to be fluent in C/C++, Fast Fourier transforms, Unix/Linux, compilers, etc...., and get used to having no user interface at all. If you want to make you own "Neat Image" plug-in or develop "Photoshop 9.0" this is the place to be.

So until somebody takes these magic "low-level" processes and turns them into a user-friendly (comercial) tool, they're going to be out of reach for just about everybody around here.
(I graduated in this general area - a long time ago, but this stuff scares me off!)

Meanwhile, we'll just have to learn to be expert users of Photoshop.

Rô

[Vespeera]

FrannieMae, what a lovely picture! It's perfect too, as far as the honeycomb texture problem.

I look forward to the tutorial Flora, I am sorry I could not get permission for the other photo.

[imrtun]

Originally Posted by byRo

This stuff is from the rocket science end of image processing. To use these programs you'd have to be fluent in C/C++, Fast Fourier transforms, Unix/Linux, compilers, etc...., and get used to having no user interface at all. If you want to make you own "Neat Image" plug-in or develop "Photoshop 9.0" this is the place to be.

So until somebody takes these magic "low-level" processes and turns them into a user-friendly (comercial) tool, they're going to be out of reach for just about everybody around here.
(I graduated in this general area - a long time ago, but this stuff scares me off!)

Meanwhile, we'll just have to learn to be expert users of Photoshop.

Rô

That's a shame

[Flora]

Hi everybody,

Originally Posted by byRo

So until somebody takes these magic "low-level"

... in my case, even that wouldn't be "low enough" ....

Fascinated by the results, I ventured a bit deeper ....

It would be nice if someone could create a 'Rosetta Stone' for these hieroglyphs

[tzec]

That program is a bit tricky to use but there is a Photoshop filter which can do FFT/IFFT and can be used to give similar results, get it here: http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~avc25/archive.htm To use this you run the filter on the image, look for bright "stars" on the output channels, clone them out and then perform the IFFT. This works better if you use the HSB/HSL<->RGB conversion filter to convert to HSB before editing, then convert back just before the IFFT. I've attached the result of applying this technique to the original image. This took less than five minutes to do.

The second image is the result after general repair and contrast adjustment.

[imrtun]

WoW!

great result