Could any one please take a look at this?

[Upke]

Hello,

There was this foto standing on a table at my grandmothers place. Its of my great great grandfather or something. I'm not sure. I do know its from 1921. I promised my grandmother to scan it someday so that she could keep the original locked away. Well I've done so today.

I've scanned it 2 times. One time at our normal real scanner. 600 dpi, bmp format: 10 Mb's very high res

And one time in our scanner, fax, copier combo:
1,15 Mb's Tiff


Now I thought, maybe I could make this photo a bit clearer in photoshop. (make the person stand out more) Also I think alot of details are missing. On the photo if I hold it at a certain angle with the light source at a certain point I see details on his pants (stripes and stuff) Now I don't see those on the scans.

I was wondering if any of you guys could take a look at the picture and maybe if you want fiddle with it. I tried darkening and lighting and messing with the curves, blurring etc etc in photoshop but I'm not to great in the program to really make anything usefull out of it.

Or if you have tips.

Thanks in advance.
Upke

Ps. If this is in the wrong forum or something, sorry.

Attached a thumb of the image, so you don't have to download 10 Mb's or 1,15

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Upke, your image is a little small to see any detail, or to do anything meaningful with, could you post one a little larger. Look for something about 800x600 pixels, and you should be able to get inside the 100K limit.

[Upke]

I've put 2 links in the post. One to a 10 Mb version and one to a 1,2 mb version. Do you need a smaller one from that?

[Noelf]

Your second link (the 1.2 meg one) is named grandpa..tif (two periods).

Might effect peoples abilities to download it.

- Noel

[Upke]

I've fixed the link. Thanks for the heads up. Haven't really paided attention to it.

[Gary Richardson]

Sorry Upke, still can't download your smaller file, and with a dial up, I'm not even going to try a 10M file.

[Upke]

Ok. I'll fix it up. Give me a few minutes.

Download 100 Kb image

Thanks for investing time in this!

[PixiePirate]

Hi Upke,

Photos like this one are a real pain to get a good scan from! That bluish glare you see is called silvering......

I tried to mess with the smaller scan as that is the clearest of the 2 but I had no luck. Maybe you could look into having someone with a drum scanner give it a try? Unless someone here has a better idea....

Good luck!

-Mindy

[Upke]

A drum scanner?

[Mike]

The easy and quick way to correct the silvering is to find a studio or lab that will copy this with a digital camera and a double polorized light set up. Make sure the camera will produce a file size big enough to work with. Or one could do the copy on film and then scan the film. There are those who talk about scanning at different angles, then laying the different scans on top of each other and doing all kinds of picking which layer give the best result etc etc. I am of the opinion that such folks also like to beat their heads against hard objects

There have been several discussions on here about silvering, do a search to find out possiably more than you wanted to know!

Mike

[Upke]

Thanks. I'll look into it. Hmmmm. I need to find someone with such a scanner.

[Gary Richardson]

Upke, thanks for the 100K version, it's downloaded fine, and I'll have a go as soon as possible. Don't hold out too many hopes, it's badly silvered. Previous suggestions about copying with a camera are probably the best way to go with this one.

[Neal Piek]

Take a good look at the photo is it silvered or a lot of old dirt on it. Scanners will pick up a reflection from years of dirt. I clean most photos before I scan.

[byRo]

Here's a little trick that sometimes works, and in this case came out just fine.

[skip if you wish]
Maths detour:
We can think of the photo as original image + noise.
A look through the 3 channels shows that the Red channel carries the image much more clearly than the Blue channel.
But we are in luck here because, while the image is different, the noise is the same.
So we have:
image(R) + noise and image(B) + noise
It's east to see that if we subtract one from the other we take out the noise and end up with:
image(R) - image(B)
If this was a unfaded grayscale original, these two would be the same and we'd be looking at just nothing. We are in luck again because the photo is yellowed, which means the Blue channel is faded. What comes out is a weakened copy of the original but now without the noise.
[/skip if you wish]

How to do (see layer palette):
- Using the channel mixer, make a monochrome copy with 100% Red;
- Make another copy with 100% Blue;
- Do a levels adjust to fix black and white points: Important MUST be exactly the same for both of the channel layers;
- Invert the Blue layer and set opacity to 50% (this is the subtraction);
- Add a levels adjust layer above these to fix B/W points of the result;
- If necessary, go back to the Blue layer and tweak the opacity (not necessary here).

Not perfect, but the noise is gone. From here, it should be possible to get to a pretty good retouched image.

Have fun!

Rô

[Janet Petty]

Ro, I'm continually amazed by your approaches to problems and the wonderful results you get. But what I'm most impressed with is your ability to TEACH a technique so that anyone can follow it. That is, more than anything, a true gift. Thank you for sharing it with us.

Janet