Spotty picture needs restored

[backygirly]

Hi everyone.

My fiancee has this tiny wallet sized picture of his mom. She died about 8 years ago, and the anniversary of her death is coming up. I was planning on restoring this picture, printing it out bigger (I have a Canon i9900, LOVE it!) and framing it for him to put in our new house (just bought our first one!).

I would say it was taken in the late 70's, early 80's. As you can kind of see, there are some red blotches all over the picture. I checked out the red channel and it looks HORRIBLE. The other channels look fine. I duped the image, converted to lab mode, and replaced the red channel with the lightness channel from the LAB pic...but obviously the colors are off. When I do that, I can't seem to restore the colors back to it's original glow.

Any thoughts on what I can to do get rid of these blotches? I don't want to convert to B/W if I can help it.

Also, any thoughts for a nice gift idea (besides a blown up image in a frame) would be great too.

Thank you soooooooooooooo much!

[jonk]

Hi Backygirly – I did download and make some corrections to make sure that I am correct. However, I cannot post the corrected image because your image is copyrighted and I respected the rights of the photographer.

However, with that said you can correct it yourself and here is how I did it; the problem is of course with the red channel. I simply rebuilt the red channel by using the “Apply Image” method. Note that the green channel maintained the most image information.

I hope this is still helpful to you.

Jon

[Gary Richardson]

Hi,

I've had a very quick go with your picture, and the following yielded some improvement.

Create new layer, set blend mode to colour. Now sample colour from good areas near to red blemishes and paint over them. Use a soft brush, and constantly change colour samples for best results. Adjust layer opacity to fine tune.

Any blemishes not removed this way can be cloned out.

Lastly I upped the contrast of your image by copying it to a new layer, desaturating, then setting blend mode to soft light. Adjust layer opacity fot effect.

Lastly sharpened around girls eyes and mouth slightly.

Sorry I had to compress your image to comply with 100K file size, this has introduced a few jpeg artifacts.

[Flora]

Hi,

great job Gary!

....Since the corrections I made were aimed to the age deteriorations and not the structure of the picture, I hope I'm not stepping on anybody's toes by posting the corrected image here ....

Like Jon, I also used the Apply Image approach for correcting the spots on the damaged Red Channel ....

• Duplicated the Background.
• Duplicated the Green Channel and used the Levels to get it as close as possible to the Red Channel (minus spots).
• Used Apply Image > Source = Green Copy, Target = Red Channel, Mode = darken (adjusted Opacity).
• Created a layer Mask (Black = Hide All) for the corrected Layer and with a soft white Brush (Opacity 50-100%) I gradually painted over the spots I wanted to correct.

[Gary Richardson]

Thanks for your kind words Flora. I like the look of the Apply Image approach, I've noted it down and will certainly be using it in the future.

As per Jon and your remarks, I hope I'm not infringing anyone's copyright by giving advice on this picture. I presume the postee has copyright or has applied for permission.

[jonk]

Hi Gary and Flora - Nice jobs. Since I was the first post, I did not want to cause any problems. The is why I did not display my restored photo. I think we are ok here because we are only giving suggestions and not really doing the work and for money. No big deal.

I have always used the "Apply Image" method and found it to be a great way to replace a bad color channel.

Nice work again guys - Talk to you soon!
Jon