hi all need help to restore a old photo

[Quickmagic]

if any of you kind people could have a look at this photo it would be great

thankyou

[Gary Richardson]

Hi, Had a quick go with your image. Have tried to keep original feel as much as possible.

Copied image to new layer and set blend mode to multiply, layer opacity to 60%.

Created new layer set to colour mode, and painted out stain on two children by using colours sampled from good areas.

Created new layer and cloned out blemishes.

Flattened Image and de-saturated colour.

Ran Noise Filter to reduce noise, then sharpened using USM filter.

Finally created new layer set to colour mode, sampled colour from original image and applied across picture using colour bucket. Reduced layer opacity to 30%. ( Note: this operation can be left out if you prefer a pure B&W image.

Had I more time I would have cloned out the childs head and daffodil in the foreground.

Found a bit of time, so cloned and patched to remove head etc.

[Quickmagic]

wow your a genius that looks loads better thankyou

ps...guess i might be spending some time here lol

oh also is there any chance of making it a bit clearer as when i print it off it tends to look quite blur 10x15 photo

[Duv]

Well, I couldn't come close to what Gary's done but I did take his pic and added a Capture: Highpass Enhanced Edge from the TLR sharpening tool box from The Lights Right and did a bit of facial pixel smoothing. Not sure if it will print any better for you. My feeling is that this looks over sharp.

Cheers
Dave

[Quickmagic]

you guys are great theres no rush for the photo if you wanna spend some time on it. shoulld have it as one of the challenges lol.

ps...thankyou for your time already

[Gary Richardson]

The reason you get a fuzzy image is there is a 100k posting limit on file size, so I had to downsize your image quite a lot, that's why you can't print out the image at anything like a decent size.

The idea of this site is to learn technique, if you just want an image enhancing, there are several pros here who would be glad to give you a price for the job.

[Quickmagic]

Originally Posted by Gary Richardson

The reason you get a fuzzy image is there is a 100k posting limit on file size, so I had to downsize your image quite a lot, that's why you can't print out the image at anything like a decent size.

The idea of this site is to learn technique, if you just want an image enhancing, there are several pros here who would be glad to give you a price for the job.

oh sorry gary misunderstood me its not my photo its a friends who wanted to see what it could look like .
anyway now i found you guys im gunna have a go myself.
thankyou again for helping out.

[Gary Richardson]

Good luck with your restore. If you have any questions, there's always someone here who'll be happy to help. Sorry if I came over a bit brusque earlier, but sometimes we get people looking for a free job, whereas the purpose of this site is to help with advice on technique. As you are in the latter category, then glad to help you where I can.

[barry_uk]

I was curious to see how it would look in colour, So had a quick play around and here is my sample of the photo in colour did'nt take me long dont it look diffrent,

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Barry, your image has posted a bit on the small side, so its hard to see what you've done. Try to end up with something about 7-800 wide, and within the 100K file size limit.

That aside, your colourising idea does give a different perspective to the picture.

[Quickmagic]

wow yeah that looks realy cool shame its a bit on the small size but well done great job.

[sandersen]

Thought I would give this a shot and see how it came out.
I boosted the overall contrast by copying the background layer, and setting the layer blend mode to multiply at about 40%. Then I adjusted the contrast, and cleaned up the blemishes using a gaussian blur art history brush. The final step was to clone out the image in front, and replace the girls foot. Since most of the kids were all wearing the same style of shoe, I just copied one, and then adjusted the levels to match the girls other foot. Not too bad for a quick repair.

Scott

[Kraellin]

it could just be my monitor, as i tend to change the gamma from day to day, but in every post i've seen so far, the two girls down on the right, their dresses look somewhat blown out to me? a selected curves maybe?

and i'd also love to see a larger copy of the colored one.

Craig

[Swampy]

Copy made of original, another copy to add some unsharpen mask then merged. Ran a B/W gradient mask, did some noise reduction etc. Added back the yellow tinge with a color fill layer at low opacity.