Need help with scanned photo

[Diddle]

I really need some help with a photo. It is a picture of my daughter and my step-grand-daughter, Justice, who was killed in a car accident 2 years ago. Me and my daughter would like to get this picture cleared up somehow. It was the only picture out of several that turned out bad.
I have tried several different things in PSP, but I just can't seem to do anything with it. Some others in a newsgroup tried also, but no luck.
I was told, by someone in the newsgroup, that maybe I could get some help in this forum.
I see that the post limit on the file size is 102400 bytes. My picture size is 441.1 kb's. Is it too large to post?
I hope someone can help me out with this !!
Thanks for any and all responses !!
Diddle

[gland]

Is there any way you can optimize the image enough to get it under the limit? If not, send the image to me and I can either post it on my website as is or optimize it enough to post it here.

[email protected]

[jeaniesa]

Hi Diddle,

Welcome to RetouchPro! I'm glad you found us. If we can help, we surely will.

I've found that if I make my image size between 700-800 pixels on the longest edge and then use a JPEG setting of 50 or so, I can usually get under the 100KB file size limit to upload. If you want a (detailed) explanation as to what affects file size, you might want to take a look at this tip.

Or, you can take Gary up on his offer to help post it for you.

Jeanie

[Diddle]

Attn: Gary

Yes, I would like very much if I could send you the picture and then you could re-size it for me or post it on your website, which ever works best for you. One thing, I would like to try to keep it close to the size it is now (if possible) ? Right now it is 1050 x 710 x 24b. Don't mean to be so picky, except the picture is special to us. I don't know if I mentioned that I scanned the photo.
Please let me know where and when you would like for me to send it to you.
Thanks so much for your help and Thanks to all who offered tips and help.
Diddle

[jeaniesa]

Diddle,

Gary posted his e-mail in his reply. You can just send your image to that address and he'll post back here with it. (Actually, it will probably have to be on his website b/c I don't know if it's possible to keep those dimensions and still make it under the 100KB limit we have here.)

Jeanie

[gland]

Jeanie is right. Looks like I'll have to post it on the website..

[email protected]

[BigAl]

An alternative would be to take a smaller section of the image, which really shows up the problem you're having, and save that as a new file, then jpeg that file and send it to the forum.

[jeaniesa]

Al is right. If you want to crop just a part of the image to post here, then we can work on that. We do our best to tell you what we have done to achieve our results, so you should be able to then duplicate the technique yourself on the whole image.

Attaching files here also helps for future members reading this thread so that they can "see" what is being referred to in the discussion. (Linking to images on websites have a habit of disappearing after a while, leaving the thread a lot less useful than it would otherwise be.)

If you still want to send the image to Gary, then perhaps he can do both - post the full image to his site and post a cropped version here. (TIA Gary! )

Jeanie

[Diddle]

I e-mailed a copy of the scanned photo to Gary. Not sure if it will be posted here or at his website, or both.
Thanks to everyone for their suggestions and help !!
Now, I'm anxious to see what can be done with it !!

Thanks again !!
Diddle

[gland]

Attached is a smaller version of the photo.

Here is the link to the big one.Large Photo

[CJ Swartz]

I'm sure there will be some better ones, but here's one version.

[CJ Swartz]

With a bit more time, my second try:

I used Image Calculations on the Red channel to multiply it and then pasted it above a dupe of the original layer with a Luminosity blend mode. Adjusted the opacity to taste and got rid of some of the color problems. I tried a number of Calculation variations on LAB and CMYK dupe copies with some limited success, but nothing better than this yet. Tried Selective Color, Color Balance, Levels and Curves, again with varying degrees of success -- nothing great. Decided to paint and select/copy to another layer and use Blending modes to bring out some of the detail of the party decorations (I guess those are balloons and strings of stars, etc.)

Diddle, you said that this photo is the only one that did NOT turn out well, so I hope this means that you and your daughter have some good photos of this adorable little cutie.

Hopefully, you'll get some other renditions here also.

Ken, going grayscale is certainly a good choice with this photo!

[Diddle]

So far, they are all great !! I can at least see their faces !! And, I didn't even realize that there were balloons in the background !! LOL
Yes, we do have lots of other photo's, but this one was more special because of it being one of Hailey (my daughter) and Justice, just the two of them (because Hailey was usually the one who was always taking the pictures). And it was taken just a couple of months before she died from injuries substained in a car accident, with her real mother. She was a very adorable and bright child and we miss her dearly......
Anyway, Thanks to everyone for their help (so far). I'm anxious to see more !!
Thanks,
Diddle

[jeaniesa]

Diddle, I have to say that this was an incredibly difficult photo to work with (at least for me). I tried to work with the color that was in the photo, but both the green and blue channels were just full of noise it seemed. I tried all sorts of channel replacements in all of the color modes (RGB, CMYK, Lab), but to no avail. So, I did as I usually do in these cases and used the one "good" channel (red), which made the image grayscale. Then ran that through Neat Image to get rid of some of the noise, brought it back into PS and used Katrin Eisman's fill-flash technique along with some further curves adjustments.

Once I had the B&W image where I wanted it, I worked on colorizing the image. I hope I got the hair coloring close to real-life - I was just guessing. After colorizing Hailey & Justice, I wasn't sure what colors should be in the background (plus it's late and I'm tired ), so I just made it sepia tone. I made Hailey's shirt pink because the photo appeared very monotone without it. (I'm guessing she was actually wearing white, but it's difficult to tell for sure.) It would be possible to colorize everything in the background, but I kind of like it the way it is now b/c I think it puts the focus on Hailey and Justice.

Anyway, I hope you like it. I think (hope!) I'm posting the full-size version. Let me know if you'd like me to e-mail you a higher JPEG quality version.

Jeanie

[Flora]

Hi Diddle and everybody!

...as for everybody , the colour was definitely the biggest problem for me as well .... so, after changing to CMYK, I worked on the Cyan Channel.
I enhanced it using practically everything I could: contrast, blur, sharpening ... etc., and, like Jeanie....

Once I had the B&W image where I wanted it...

I copied the original picture on top of it, blurred it, increased the Saturation and changed the blending to Color as to get back some of the original colour which turned out quite flat.

So... after selecting it, I blurred and slightly desaturated the background and then I lightly colorized Hailey and Justice to make them stand out more.

I created an Overlay Adjustment Layer and, using a soft brush, (either black or white), I selectively enhanced parts of the picture.

I slightly sharpened Hailey and Justice and made a soft Vignette as to fade the background even more and to give the image a softer look.

Unfortunately I worked on the small sized picture because yesterday ..... (I'll blame it on the gremlins... ...), I wasn't able to download the large sized one.