I've been a little silent in the forums lately - because I've had some ridiculously difficult photos to work on. At least, I think they're hard. I've been tearing my hair out over this one and could use some advice. The photo is from 1970 and is literally filled with hairline cracks all over it - not to mention the fact that it is horribly faded and appears not to have been a focused snapshot to begin with. BUT, I've been asked to restore it, so I'm trying my best.
I'm attaching the before/middle/after portion of the photo so you can see what I'm working with. (In the next post, I'll attach the entire photo.) As you can see, the "middle" version entailed replacing the green channel with the blue channel and adjusting the levels. That worked pretty well to get the colors somewhere near normal.
The "after" version is after running the Decrack action about a dozen times - sometimes using "minimum" to remove the light cracks and sometimes using "maximum" to remove the dark cracks (which appeared when I tried to remove the light cracks.) As you can see, the dark areas look pretty good, but I just can't get the cracks out of the light areas. (And as you'll see in the attachment in the next post, the light areas cover more of the image than the dark areas.)
I've also tried Jak's tutorial on "dust spotting large areas", but found that if I used "darken" to darken the white cracks, all of the black mold spots popped out. If I tried to "lighten", the white cracks showed back up.
Does anyone have any other ideas other than cloning out all the cracks (which I'm sure will look awful anyway)?
Thanks, Jeanie
I'm attaching the before/middle/after portion of the photo so you can see what I'm working with. (In the next post, I'll attach the entire photo.) As you can see, the "middle" version entailed replacing the green channel with the blue channel and adjusting the levels. That worked pretty well to get the colors somewhere near normal.
The "after" version is after running the Decrack action about a dozen times - sometimes using "minimum" to remove the light cracks and sometimes using "maximum" to remove the dark cracks (which appeared when I tried to remove the light cracks.) As you can see, the dark areas look pretty good, but I just can't get the cracks out of the light areas. (And as you'll see in the attachment in the next post, the light areas cover more of the image than the dark areas.)
I've also tried Jak's tutorial on "dust spotting large areas", but found that if I used "darken" to darken the white cracks, all of the black mold spots popped out. If I tried to "lighten", the white cracks showed back up.
Does anyone have any other ideas other than cloning out all the cracks (which I'm sure will look awful anyway)?

Thanks, Jeanie
Comment