Advice Needed for Retouching Old Photo

[sm9]

Hi there,

My parents have given me a photo to retouch, but it's giving me some problems. I'm using Photoshop 7 and I'm okay at using this, and I'm familiar with using the Clone Tool, Healing Brush, Layers, etc, but I've not ever tried to restore a photo like this before.

The photo was torn in half, and there's also a partial tear in the centre that goes to the right - either side of this tear, there is some difference in colour, so when I try and clone the tear away, it doesn't match!

I've attached a low resolution version of this image so you know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, any advice on where to start and how to go about this will be much appreciated! And hopefully, I'll be able to print it out in time for Christmas!

Thanks,

Stephen

[Duv]

Hi Stephen

Have you tried a soft edged brush set to black, opacity 5% and blending mode to Darken. Paint gently over the lighter discolored portions on the upper side of the crease.

Cheers
Duv

[sm9]

Hi Duv,

No, I haven't tried that, but thanks for the idea! I will open the image shortly and have an play around with this and other similar settings. Previously, I'd only tried using the clone tool and healing brush.

Thanks,

Stephen

[Hunter]

Stephen, you might also try this... use your clone tool, but set the merge mode of it to Color and then clone the color of the background over the discolored area. I'm presumign that PS allows Color as a merge mode with the clone tool. I use Photopaint and it does this, so I'd be surprised if PS doesn't.

[Hunter]

forgot to attach this - this is an enlarged area where I cloned the background color in, then switched the merge mode back to Normal from Color and just did a quick swipe over the tear... is this what you were wanting?

[Paulie]

Welcome! You could try a scanning technique that someone has posted here previously,(just had a quick scan but couldn't locate it), but it basically involves scanning the pieces of the photo at different angles, then merging them in PS to even out the differences in colour that may be due to the way the scanner lamp reflects off the photo surface. I tried a quick retouch on the example you posted, & all i did was add a new background & repaired the damage on the subjects with the clone tool. Don't think it looks too bad,let me know what you think. Hope i have helped in some way!

[sm9]

Hi there,

Thank you to everyone for your replies, they are much appreciated!

To Duv: that darken tip works fine, so I can manually go through certain areas to try and colour correct it, thanks. My only query is deciding on which samples I should use this on?

To Hunter: when using the Clone Tool in Photoshop 7, I can change the mode at the top of the page to Colour, though I'm not sure if it's having the same effect as it is in your pain program? Also, thanks for attaching that sample image, and that looks great. The main problems I'm now having are with the child at the bottom of the image, on her cheek, and I've just attached an image showing this.

To Paulie: Wow, you've done it! My only regret now is that I never posted a 2000 pixel wide image, as you would have then saved me a lot of time and I could have just printed your 'quick retouch' (you're so modest!) and gave it to my parents! But, of course, I want to learn these methods myself, so please let me know if you did anything else, other than use the clone tool. Or if it was only the clone tool, then what settings did you use for it, and exactly which brush?

I've been busy using the clone tool, and I've came across a similar problem to what I tried to describe in the original post. I've attached a sample image that shows my problem: when cloning across a tear in the photo, as either side of the tear is a different colour, the clone area needs to be blended, or either side of the cloned area needs to be matched in colour.

From the attached image, can anyone recommend what my best solution to fix this is? Or any other advice? Perhaps the advice has already been mentioned but I'm just not carrying it out correctly?

Anyway, thank you to everyone for your help so far, it's much appreciated. I'd better go to bed now as it's just gone 5am!

Regards,

Stephen

[Duv]

Nice job Paulie! The only thing I might add is using the Patch tool instead of Cloning. I don't have a lot of time to really work on it but this might give you an idea..maybe clean up the edges with clone.

Cheers
Duv

[sdubose99]

I took a slightly different approach, mainly because the portion of the photo on the right is offset from the left. I saw the little girl's right eye in Paulie's version was flopped so she was looking in two different directions!

First I changed to grayscale to remove the color variations. Then I lassoed the right half of the photo, including the tear and a little to the left of the tear. Copy/Pasted onto itself, then adjusted the opacity of the new pasted layer down (to about 50%) so you can move it and see how the alignment is going. Using the move tool or the left arrow key, move the new layer until everything aligns. I used the girl's hair curl to align everything. You can see in the attachment where I've pasted and moved the layer.

Then I masked over the stuff to the left of the tear, removed everything up to the tear, flattened the image, then cloned/healed/levels, sharpened a little, and voila.

Happy holidays,
Scott

[saiklova]

helping

hi , i am resending you the family pict. u can work on it with the healing brush and other brushes too , this is only to make you see the defference, i worked on it ( not finished yet )with the healing tool and clooning and blur tool .

[Gary Richardson]

Hi SM9,

The first thing that needed doing with your picture, was to align it correctly, as this made cloning out the crack much easier.

The way I did this, was as follows.

Copy picture to new layer, then use extract filter. Use Smart Highlighting tool to draw down the crack, then select the rhs of the image.

You should now have your basic image on background, and the rhs of the image in the layer above. Move the rhs of your picture left a little, and down,to line up properly with the lhs of the image below. Now take a soft eraser, and carefully erase along the edge of the upper image, to get rid of the torn white edge.

This should give you a tear that is easier to clone over.

Rest of image was just a case of creating a new layer, and cloning over defects.

Took out the writing, but if this is wanted, should be no problem to leave it in.

Lastly did a quick levels adj to up the contrast, then ran it through Neat Image to get rid of a tiny bit of noise.

[Cassidy]

Strikes me that this photo apart from the tear, also separates the photo slightly distorting the face of the smallest. This being my belief, I cut along the tear and moved the two halves together to meet where I felt the actual meeting should have been. Other than that it was all pretty much cloning.

[Panpan]

This thread jumped from 2003 to 2005!

Pierre

[Gary Richardson]

Well spotted Pierre, "they only see who can look".

Oh well, the practice will do me good.

[adong]

HI..sm9