Starting a project, advice needed

[Brent H]

Hey everyone,

I'm thinking about starting a family photo restoration/enhancement project, as a lot of the photos I own have been moved around a lot and it's evident that they've started to deteriorate. It's time to move things to digital media

Now, the damage on the majority of the photos is minimal (a good time to actually do something like this), but there is still some fuzziness and/or some color casting going on.

What's the best way to approach these kinds of photos, and what should be done to restore them? Any tips, links, tutorials, etc would be most appreciated.

Thank you for your help

[NancyJ]

For the fuzzyness you should look into something like neatimage or noiseninja - PS has its own noise reduction utility but its not that good - or not as good as specialised utilities.
For your colour cast - auto levels does a good job on that particular image - though that might not be the case on all - with the levels dialogue open use the eyedroppers to select a black point and a white point in the image - that should remove the colour cast - dont use reflections for your white point.
If you have trouble finding a black or white point try this trick. Hold down alt then drag the black or white triangle(the image will go black or white at this point) along the histogram until parts of your image poke through - those pixels are your darkest or brightest point.
Drag the slider back to the end and then use the black and white points with the eyedroppers as normal. Its not perfect - you still have to remember where the dark/light points are but it should help a little.

[Brent H]

Nancy, Thanks for pointing out NoiseNinja, that's exactly what I need for a lot of these photos!

I know of the threshold trick to get the black/white points, but I wasn't aware that you weren't supposed to use reflections... That will probably help a great deal

Any other suggestions from you or other people would be more than welcome

[duwayne]

I looked at both photos and it seem the biggest problem is the digital noise in the pictures. Noise reduction software (I use Neatimage) can be very helpful but must be used with care to avoid the "plastic" look. My guess is that the noise is coming from your scanner. You might want to try another and compare results.

I generally scan prints around 400-600 ppi. This give me a little room to spare if I crop the photo and still end up with 300 ppi. If possible save the original files in tiff format. If you have to use jpeg, use the highest quality setting available. Also, save all your original scan file.