Tips on Old Photo

[Romany]

Hi Again
First of all I would like to say sorry about all the post's asking for help on various subjects.
Today I have ordered the Photoshop Restoration & Retouching, Second Edition by Katrin Eismann, can't wait for it to arrive ( maybe then I can contribute something better that what little I have posted ).
I have been given a photo of a family member in a football team when he was a boy, the photo has some serious damage to it , but I think it is repairable, anyway before the book arrives I was wondering if I could get some tips on how to restore the image, I am not asking for a repair job, but grateful if so, what I would like is tips on how to use the clone, patch,Healing Brush to rid the photo of the cracks.
Any Help or links would be gratefully received!
Cheers
Chris
PS: On the photo , there is a burn like mark, what are they called in old photo's?

[Ken Fournelle]

Romany,

First, I duplicated the background layer. I selected Channels and found that the Red channel had the least damage from the "burn". I copied the Red channel to the duplicated background layer. Next I applied a Levels Adjustment Layer, a small "S" curve on a Curves Adjustment layer.

The remainder is copying & patching, Clone Stamp Tool, Healing Brush.

For the coach, I made a 1 pixel selection of one boy's nose and eyes, anothers chin and mough and another's the forehead and hair. I used Transform to "stretch" these parts to adult size. Heal and clone to blend.

For the boy in the turtle-neck sweater, I copied his left shoulder, flipped horizontal and placed it over his right shoulder. Heal and clone blend.

The remainder was heal and cloning. I deciede against replacing the background. If I would have had a higher rez image I would have done more detail work.

K

[Ken Fournelle]

Here's the photo

[Ken Fournelle]

wrong file, sorry

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Romany, had a quick play with your picture. There's still work that could be done to improve it. Firstly I cropped out the unwanted areas to the sides of the image, which in my opinion added nothing to the picture.

Next I selected the burnt areas, then desaturated them. I then inverted the selection and desaturated the rest of the image. I inverted selection again to re-select burnt areas, then adjusted this using levels to match tone on rest of image.

Then I did a lot of cloning, tips for this are vary brush size and hardness according to clone source and destination, vary opacity again according to need, and lastly but most importantly, always work on a seperate layer, that way if you make mistakes you can erase them using the eraser tool.

For larger areas, I usually patch, by selecting and copying to a new layer, then moving and sometimes resizing the patch. Unless it is a plain area, I seldom use the patch tool, as you get blurred edges which can be visible if not used carefully.

I cloned out the coach, as his face was too damaged to be restored well. If you have another photo of his face, this would enable you to rebuild him successfully.

Lastly I sampled the sepia colour from the original, and used it to colour the restored version.

Didn't like cloned area by chair, so copied chair next to it and pasted to another layer.

[Flora]

Hi verybody,

Ken, Gary,

Really great jobs!!!

Chris,

Never feel sorry for requesting help! These Forums have been created just for that!!! .... Besides, since each picture has its specific problem/s, working on them helps us practice and try to find new ways for dealing with them.

I had a go at your picture:

• Like Gary, I cropped the image.
• Duplicated the background
• Beside its obvious problems, the picture had a lot of 'compression blocks', so, I run byRo JPEG Cleaner (the action can be downloaded here from our new Resources Section).
• I used Channel Mixer
  Red > 108
  Green > -6
  Blue > +2
  Monochrome Box Checked.
  to turn the image black&white .... this got rid of the yellowish 'burnt' spots.
• Like Gary, I opted for 'removing the coach/teacher as, in my opinion, there weren't details enough to try to reconstruct his face.
• I used: Healing Brush (Replace and normal Modes), Patch Tool and Copy+Paste to repair scratches and the worst damage.
• Run through Neat Image to remove the remaining noise.
• Created 'my' usual variety of empty Layers ( Blendings: Lighten, Darken, and Normal), and with a soft white/black or sampled colour brush (Opacity 10-30%), I carefully painted over the details I wanted to correct and enhance.
• Used USM to enhance Contrast and to lightly sharpen the image.
• Starting from colour sampled from the picture, I used Hue&Sat for colouring the image lightly.
• Softly darkened the corners of the picture to make the group stand out more.

[Gary Richardson]

Great job Flora, as usual up to your high standard. Ro's action has done a great job on the artifacts. I just had to download it at once. Thanks for the link, really must browse the new Resources section more.

[Romany]

Well, what can I say, I am gobsmacked by the quality of the work everyone has done here, I am trying to put together tutorials out of the techniques used to make it easier for me in the future.
Thank You All
Chris

[Flora]

Gary, Chris,

thanks for your kindness and feedback!