Help requested old photo

[mead]

Hi everyone. I have an old photo that I can't seem to finish.
Here is the original.

[mead]

and the retouch

The original is a scan of a scan.
I thought changing to sepia might help, but the highlights still look too light to me.
Does anyone know what else I can do to it? Or how?
Thanks in advance.
kat

[roger_ele]

Hi,

The blown out white areas have no detail, so there is no way to bring it back with technique...

the only thing I know to do is to somehow paint in detail where there is none. Then you can go back and lighten and darken the painted in areas to give shape, highlights and shadows.

I did a real quick job on just the faces and hands to give you an idea ... after painting in you can add a subtle pattern or noise to the whole image to tie it altogether.

I also did a curves adjustment to lighten and lower the contrast in the dark areas. It softened the garrish look of the scanned scan.

Hope this helps,
Roger

[mead]

thank you

Thanks for your reply. Yes, you did help. I'm new to this and wasn't sure about the highlights but thought they were too far gone. Thanks for confirming that. I appreciate you showing me what might help them. I will give that a try.

Garrish is a good discription of the look of the picture. That's why I tried the sepia, didn't help much, but was all I knew to do.


Thanks again for your help, kat

[Flora]

Hi Kat,

...I had a go at your picture ...

As Roger already pointed out ...

"The blown out white areas have no detail, so there is no way to bring it back with technique... "

I used both, yours and Roger's techniques in trying to fix it ...

I run it through Neat Image (which can be found here) to minimize the noise, and 'played' some more with Curves, Luminosity Mask and several Layers, changing Blending and Opacity ....

[mead]

looks lots better

Flora,
Looks alot better. Thanks for taking the time.
I'm going to try your techniques. I like what you have acheived.
Thanks again, kat

[big_bad_toxman]

Hey Kat,

For what it's worth - here's my attempt.

- I gave Neat Image a go and it's... well... neat!
- Then adjustted the brightness/contrast and slightly tweaked the levels at the low end of the graph.
- Used the healing and clone brush to remove the crack.
- Cloned in some eyes to the boy in the back.
- Ran Neat Image again with sharpen activated.
- Used the history brush to selectively apply the sharpening to features of the clothing etc.
- Added the sepia-ish tone.
- Adjusted the lighting on the boy's face to match that of the subjects nearby (sort of!).
- Added grain.
- Cropped to get rid of the line running across the bottom.

Tried to reconstruct the baby's face - but it just looked too dodgy, so left it as it was. I still can't help but think that the face looks a little too "drawn in". Any ideas?

Cheers
Tony

[mead]

Tony,
Yours looks good. Thanks for taking the time to play with it. I think this is a real tough one. Faces have been a real challenge. Your right, it's hard to get them natual looking.
I have been playing with it some more, trying what others have posted.

Thanks for posting what you did to it. I'll try your techniques. This is one pic that I keep playing with. Just can't seem to let it go.
It's been a real learning experience!
Again, thanks.

kat