get rid of bottom fading etc.

[albatrosss]

No matter what I do I can't get rid of the light and dark spots, or the entire light area for that matter, at the bottom of the photo. I am specifically referring to the area under the boy's hands. (That was me almost 60 years ago.

Would appreciate your suggestions as to what to do.

Thanks

[Steve13]

crop tool?

[mistermonday]

I'm with Steve13, there is no detail whatsoever down there.
Regards, Murray

[albatrosss]

Agree that there is no detail. Just want to smooth out the bottom of the photo.

[lurch]

Frequency separation would work for that, maybe.

[albatrosss]

Unfortunately my version does not have frequency separation. Any other suggestions or is what I want to do not possible?

[freddie]

Do you mean something like this? (bottom left side)

http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/5...milyforweb.jpg

To do it, I did the frequency separation as mentioned from modelmayhem. You can easily find the tutorial here for it. After this, I worked on the low frequency layer. What I did is take the paintbrush, and had the size at about 150 pix. Opacity at 60. I would sample the black close to where the picture was visible. Then I would sponge downward till I got to the bottom. Then I would move to the side and resample again and go downward again... on and on till finished, while trying to ensure that the colors blended nicely and evenly. Finally, I worked on the hi frequency layer and just used the healing brush.... and voila. I didn't finish it, because I figured you'd want to take a go at it.

I hope this is helpful.

[albatrosss]

Freddie,

That's exactly what I wanted but I couldn't find the tutorial.

Thanks again, appreciated.

[freddie]

With frequency separation, you can go even a little further in blurring the low frequency than the tutorial says. If you blur out all of the blotches on the low frequency, then you can pretty much touch up all of the other spots on the high frequency with the healing brush. This saves you from doing any painting at all. Here, take a look:

http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/5...milyforweb.jpg

Its not perfect, as I only worked at it for a few minutes. But you get the idea.

[Der_W]

Originally Posted by albatrosss

I couldn't find the tutorial.

Here you go: http://www.modelmayhem.com/po.php?th...=1#post9585669
It's well worth reading the whole thing (okay, skip all the thank you posts), it contains lots of valuable information :-).

[albatrosss]

Thanks. Found tutorial but with Photoshop 6 could not use the tutorial. Is there some work around or am I out of luck.

Thanks again

[Der_W]

Is there a high pass and Gaussian blur in PS6?
If so, you could use a work around by blurring the lower layer with Gaussian blur and then using the exact same radius for the high pass on the top layer.
Now set the blending mode for the top layer to "Linear Light" and reduce the fill opacity (if fill opacity doesn't exist in v6, use standard opacity) to 50%.
Not exactly as accurate (you'll probably notice some loss in the shadows and highlights), but it can get you near.


If even "Linear Light" doesn't exist in v6, there's still a work around (that is even 100% accurate), but it's more complicated and not so comfortable to work with, so I'll rather wait for your response ;-).

[albatrosss]

Jonas,

Will certainly give it a try. Photoshop 6 can do what you suggested. Will give it a shot as soon as I can and let you know the outcome.

The reason I am keeping after this is that I have many 60-70 year old photos with that bottom crap and I would like to clean up some of them.

Thanks again

[albatrosss]

Jonas,

No Linear Light of Photoshop 6. I really don't want to take so much of your time and effort.

[Der_W]

Originally Posted by albatrosss

No Linear Light of Photoshop 6.

Now I know, why I use CS5 ;-).

Don't worry, I'm always glad to help and problems get my creativity flowing ;-).

So, no "Linear Light". That means, we have to build up our frequency separation in three layers, leaving you with a little less comfort unfortunately.

First off, start with your original image, duplicate the background layer three times.
Blur the bottom copy and invert it, set the blending mode for the middle layer to "Linear Dodge", disable the visibility for the top layer.
Merge all the visible layers to a new layer using [Shift]+[Ctrl]+[Alt]+[E], set the blending mode for this layer to "Linear Burn" and disable the opacity.
Discard the layer you set to "Linear Dodge"

Now activate the top layer (third copy), set its blending mode to "Linear Burn" and invert it.
Again, merge visible using [Shift]+[Ctrl]+[Alt]+[E], set the blending mode for this layer to "Linear Dodge", discard the original layer and invert the bottom layer for the last time.

I created an action for you, because I guess my explanation is a little hard to follow ;-).

As I said, this gives you a little less comfort, meaning that you have to do all the healing/cloning on two layers now instead of just one.
But you can still work with the LOW layer like you would in any other split, so it might still be (and hopefully is) of benefit for you :-)

[albatrosss]

No "Linear Dodge" either

[Der_W]

Oh my. Now I'm really running out of ideas :-D
But wait a second, you have "Image"-"Calculations", no?

If so, could you please check, whether the blending modes "Subtract" and "Add" exist in the list?

But that's really my last idea now :-(.

Edit: Forget, what I just said, it won't work either (since there's still no way to add/subtract the details afterwards).
Sorry, I have no more ideas that could work.

[albatrosss]

Jonas,

Have "Calculations". Have "Subtract and Add".

Did not realize how involved this would get but then again Photoshop 6 vs Photoshop CS5 is a few bucks.


Appreciate your efforts. You are really hanging in there.

George

[Der_W]

My original idea was to do the whole split with calculations alone and combine the results afterwards.
However THIS is going to be extremely uncomfortable and will only work with gray scale images (it could work with RGB as well, but would be a real pain in the neck).

Now at first, you'll have two channels in your channels palette.
One is called "LOW" (this one will be blurred by you), the other one is called "HIGH" (this one is for all the cloning work).
Now you'll have to work on each of those separately and when you're finished, press resume in the actions panel.
The action will now recreate the image from those two layers, go back to the black (gray) channel and paste your result. After that all the working channels get deleted.


Now I'm really hoping this isn't giving you actually more work than before ;-).

[freddie]

Good stuff Jonas... I'm impressed.

[Der_W]

Thank you :-).
I hope it helps though ;-).

Btw. it'd be possible to make above action (with the calculations command) 100% accurate (at this state, it's by far not), but that would make it even MORE uncomfortable and I really don't think, that this is worth the accuracy. You could probably use a layer mask after you did your repair as well to hide stuff you don't want.

[CharlesBell]

Stretching out the image, I do not see any real image data below the knees of the man on the right. Crop that out. As for the spots, you can use the clone stamp tool or spot healing brush on those.

Do you have the negative of the image? It may be better to scan that to start. It may also be free of those spots which are a sign of the age of the image print and some kind of chemical action over time.

[albatrosss]

After reading all the advice I just didn't realize the difficulty this presented. I really don't think that its worth the time. I ended up by masking the photo with dark color and then painting over the spotted area. Came out presentable.

Thanks all of you for your time and interest. I know that I certainly learned quite a bit from the discussion. I also learned how little I know when compared to Jonas, Freddie and others.

Thanks again.