Removing majic maker scribbles from photo

[Steve Railey]

Hello All,

I'm new to this forum and need some help on a photo restoration.

I have a color photo, scanned at 600dpi, of a 5th grade class (from 1969). I'm using Photoshop 7.0. A medium blue magic marker has been scribbled over two of the students and I need to remove those marks. A look at the channels indicates the blue channel is best, and the red channel shows the marks as solid black scribbles. I've deleted the red and green channels, which deleted the markings, but that leaves me with a grayscale photo, and I need color. I have also tried replacing the red channel with the blue channel, but can't figure out how to correct the resulting color imbalance.

All suggestions very much appreciated.

Thanks, Steve

[Leah]

Steve,

You could try this tutorial from Adobe -- I've had mixed results but it does work very well for some marks/stains.

If the marks are very bad but only over two of the students then it's possible that colourising that area of the image after getting a decent greyscale version may end up being your best way to go.

Can you post/link to the photo or a crop of the affected area plus some adjoining area so we can give you some more specific advice?

Thanks,

Leah

[Steve Railey]

Leah,

Thanks for the quick reply. I've posted a jpeg of the pix in the Help requested forum.

Got the tutorial you recommended and am working through it now.

Thanks, Steve