Photo Retouching - - Help with grainy photo

lynette436 · #1 08-14-2007, 10:51 AM

I need some help and restoring an old and grainy baby photo. Does anyone have any suggestions.

lynette436 · #2 08-14-2007, 10:56 AM

This is my baby photo and it needs help. I have tried different things in CS2 and I am not that experienced. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks

philbach · #3 08-14-2007, 12:39 PM

Lynette it doesn't look like you submitted your grainy photo.

pixel_monkey · #4 08-14-2007, 12:40 PM

There are many methods. Here are the 3 that I tend to use the most. Convert your file to LAB mode and blur the color channels. There's a noise reduction filter in CS2 that works well...there's no correct settings, you just have to play with it until you find the right setting that suits your image. This one works only in CS3...open your jpegs or tiffs in camera raw and do your noise reduction in there.

lynette436 · #5 08-14-2007, 01:42 PM

I put it under the Salon forum by mistake. It want let me put another picture on this thread. I am new to this and can't figure out how to do this.
Lynette

albatrosss · #6 08-14-2007, 02:33 PM

Here's my attempt. Levels>Blur>Dodge and Burn. Didn't spend much time on the image and it shows.

lynette436 · #7 08-14-2007, 02:46 PM

Thanks, I have been working on it all day, also trying to learn CS2.

LonK · #8 08-14-2007, 03:32 PM

Lynette, hopefully you have a larger image to work with, but nevertheless, you might want to simply try some noise reduction. I used Neat Image - a couple of passes with cleanup and tone enhancement with gradients between. Took about 2 minutes.

unimatrix001 · #9 08-14-2007, 03:37 PM

another quick run at this photo
used a pluging called noiseware
then switched to lab mode and adjusted the colors and brightness

lynette436 · #10 08-14-2007, 03:41 PM

Do you have the full version of Neat Image, I downloaded the trial one and I could not get it to look that good. Do you have step by step instructions that I could try. Is this the only program that you used? I have a bigger version of the picture but had to reduce the size to upload it. This pictures means alot to my adoptive daughter. This is the only infant picture she has.
thanks

DCobb · #11 08-14-2007, 03:51 PM

I believe it you just rename your picture you will be able to post it here. If it was named baby, name it baby1 and you should be able to post it.

dc

lynette436 · #12 08-14-2007, 03:59 PM

Let me see if this attachment worked.

DCobb · #13 08-14-2007, 04:00 PM

I just used the Noise Reduction filter and adjusted the color in LAB. After that I used a little degrunge. I do have the Neat Image Plugin and Stand Alone product but when I went to use it a message came back that the RGB values? were not equal. I need to sit down with the tutorial and see if I can figure out how to correct that problem.

dc

LonK · #14 08-14-2007, 04:00 PM

I just use the free version of Neat Image. Admittedly, it's not the most intuitive software and takes some practice to get used to. In this case though, I used only the auto processes. In my editor (not Photoshop) then, I stacked dup layers using multiply and screen modes, each gradually faded to even out the lighting a bit. I did little else simply because of the futility of working with such a small file.

You should be able to upload a much larger size image -- 600 X 900 will fit under 100K nicely without excessive compression in my editor. I believe it's "save for web" in Photoshop.

DCobb · #15 08-14-2007, 04:02 PM

Yes, it did. I also posted a reply in the salon forum with a picture.

dc