old newspaper half-tone photos

[gblount]

I recently came across an old photo of a relative in an old newspaper.
It is black and white, printed in half tones.
Does anyone have any photoshop actions, or advice on how to clean this type of photo up so it can be enlarged and printed?

Thanks,
Gregory

[Duv]

Hi Greg

Send us a pic. High res as possible.

Cheers
Duv

[Xaran]

If it has printing on the reverse I suggest that you place a dark piece of paper/card behind it when scanning as this usually blocks any print from the reverse showing through in the light areas.

If you scan it and post a copy here the members will certainly offer advice on how best to restore/retouch it.

Restoring half tone to photo effect is not always great.

Christine

[Doug Nelson]

One of our very first Restoration Challenges was about this very topic. It's very tough, especially if there's more dots than image, but maybe you can get some tips over there.

[Duv]

By the way. I think I want to be where you are. Sounds rather nice.

Cheers
Duv

[gblount]

Old newspaper halftone photos

Here is the old newspaper photo I want to enlarge and print. I scanned it at 600 dpi, then optimized it for the web. It was still too large to upload on RP, so I put it here: http://www.junct.com/~gblount .
Any advice or help will be appreciated.
Thanks,
Greg

[Doug Nelson]

On the example you posted, a Gaussian blur of .8 pixels doesn't look too bad.

[gblount]

Old newspaper halftone photos

Thanks Doug,
I'll give that a try.
Greg

[Paris]

Hi Greg,

Recently my nephew had a image he wanted printed and like your's it was from a newspaper.

After fiddling around, I got the best results from duplicating the image setting layer to Overlay with 50% Opacity, and using "Free Transform" nudged the layer once either right or left - it depends on the image as to which way is best. Up and down nudge can sometimes help, too. I then used Gaussian blur of .5 - .8.

All in all it worked out better than expected.

On your example the above method improved the original.

**Paris**

[catia]

I find myself coming back to Neat Image over and over when it comes to repetitive noise. I didn't try to do any post processing, just one time through the NeatImage Demo program.

Catia

[Rod]

I have found that scanning the photo "on the bias" and then straightening it in Photoshop can help with the halftone problem.......I read this somewhere among some other scanning tips on another site.

[Duv]

To Catia's point, I'm also a Neat Image freak. Personally, I didn't like the one time thru Neat Image so as a secondary step I went into the Noise Filter Settings added sharpening to the channels and here's what I got. I think the more you play with Neat Image settings the more powerful a tool it will become.

Cheers
Duv

[philbach]

Old Photo

Well I briefly tried, but other than some blurring and levels I wasn't very successful. I did enclose the file I worked on for a few minutes. There did not seem to be much difference between the RGB channels. I did levels and some minimal tonal adjustments. I also upscaled the photo blurred it and than resized it downword. Oh well.

[gblount]

Old newspaper halftone photos

Thanks one and all for the help on this project. I will look for the NeatImage demo this weekend and try working on the photo. I'll post my final work after that.

There are always soooo many nice and helpful folks here at RP. Thank you all again!!!

Greg

[gblount]

Old newspaper halftone photos

I am having trouble downloading NeatImage Demo. After downloading it and opening the setup, I get an error message that the file is the wrong number of expected bytes.

Does anyone know of an alternate download site for this demo?

Greg