Help with green on photo

[ExoticChaos]

Thanks for looking. I have been lurking around this great board for a while now. Trying my hand at retouching some old family photos. I just can't seem to figure out how to get rid of the green on this photo without having to clone or heal a little at a time. Does anyone have any suggestions or other tools I could try??

[Leah]

The damage is in the red channel (#1 tip for photo restoration - always look at the individual channels before you do anything else as that will give you a hint on how to proceed), so this is what I did... Add a new Levels adjustment layer. On the Red channel only, drag the middle slider to the right so that the figures in the boxes are 0, 1.6 (or so), and 255.

Than add a Hide all layer mask to the Levels layer.

Then using a soft brush (soft airbrush?) and a middling Opacity, paint in white on the Levels layer mask over the areas with the green stains.

Attached is a quick demonstration (a couple of minutes only, so I haven't got rid of all traces of the stain, but you get the idea) - obviously you would want to spend more time on it and could get a better result that way). It might be necessary to repeat the technique on the dress area.

[winwintoo]

I'm using PhotoShop Elements 2.

I didn't have much luck with this green stain, until I decided to try the much maligned red-eye tool in PSE2.

How this works, you set the replacement color and paint over the offending area with the tool and it replaces whatever is under the brush with the color you specify, but in the same tone as existed before (did I say that right )

I thought this might be the kind of challenge that the red-eye tool could handle so I gave it a try.

I worked on the right side of her face.

Hope this helps,
Margaret

[roger_ele]

Hi,

I wasn't able to do it without some cloning. The thing is that you don't just have green stains, you have red stains also ... both of these areas are in the red channel. I tried a number of things before I figured this out ...

So I duplicated the photo and changed the duplicate to LAB mode. Back to the original photo, Selected red channel in Channels window, used apply image to paste the Luminosity channel from the duplicate into the red channel (replaced it). That left too little red in the image so I used apply image, source the red channel that I was at in screen mode at about 30% to add a little more red.

Curves adjustment for overall color and brightness.

Hue/Saturation to increase saturation a little

Added blank layer set to color mode, used paint brush to paint in new skin color, lips and hair.

Flattened, cloned face and shirt, did not finish the shirt ...

Hope this helps, I think there is no easy way to do a quick fix ... now that I have said that I will wait to learn from one of the experts here what that quick fix I couldn't come up with is ...

Roger

[ExoticChaos]

Wow! Thanks for the replies everyone. You have definitely given me a place to start. Roger that is EXCELLENT! I was afraid it wasn't gonna be a quick fix AHHH. Darn! Everyone here has such great tips. Thanks again, I will post the after image (if I can get it to look halfway decent!)

[ExoticChaos]

Here's my redo of this picture. I can't thank you guys enough for all the great tips. I have learned so much just lurking around this board. I am pretty happy with the result. The face I think may look a little fake? I used the brush on a new layer to "color" it then used the burn tool to add some slight shadows under the eyes and around the cheeks. Is there another step I could do to make it look more natural? A grain layer maybe?

Thanks so much Roger for the tips you gave me on the lab color and copying the luminosity channel. It worked great getting rid of most of the green and the reddish purple.

[Leah]

A quick fix I tried to help reduce the "flat" look - take a copy of the original (with green stains included) and layer that on top of your restored version. Set blend mode to Luminosity. Add a Hide All layer mask. Then brush in with white (building up using a very low opacity) on the mask in the face area only. It gets closer to the original shading but without reintroducing the staining (you won't want to brush in too much white over the very stained areas, but as you're using very low opacity you can control that).

By the way, great job on the restore!