Flood-Damaged Photo

[mashny]

Hi:

I've restored many photos over the last few years, mainly as a hobby, but occasionally professionally. The attached picture is the victim of flood damage, and I'm not quite sure where to start. Rather than waste lots of time cloning, I'm going to extract the girl and put her on a new background, but I'm not sure what to do about the areas where the color information cannot be seen. The blue channel has, by far, the most information, but I'm not sure about the best way to use it to repair the image. Also, short of recreating the nose—and I'm not an artist—or finding one on the web that is a close enough match, does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks very much for any help or advice.

Matthew

[Cameraken]

Re: Flood-Damaged Photo

Hi Matthew

The picture is badly water damaged; very little colour information is left.
I started by repairing the luminosity (black and white), once this is done the colour can be put back.
The luminosity was repaired in a similar method to this.

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=255

I used the blue channel as it was the cleanest.
Just ask if you need any help.

Regards

Ken

[crazyfly1]

Re: Flood-Damaged Photo

Cameraken, that's pretty amazing. I'd be interested to hear the specifics of how you went about fixing the damage and adding back color especially in the skin areas.

[mashny]

Re: Flood-Damaged Photo

Cameraken: That's incredible! Thank you so much. I'll go through the tutorial you referenced and do what I can, but I'll probably have questions.

Thanks for responding so quickly, and for taking the time to help me with this.

Matthew

[Cameraken]

Re: Flood-Damaged Photo

Hi

Thanks for your comments

One of the hardest marks to remove is on the face

This is what I did.

Adjust the input levels of the Blue Channel to 96 – 0.62 – 212
And copy the blue channel to a layer

Then on the damaged area:-

Run Filter > Other > Maximum at 1

Then I lightened the damaged area with a “blank layer set to” Overlay
(see this. http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=206)

Next I ran Filter > Noise > Dust and Scratches 4,6

Finally I used Neat Image plus several more “blank layer set to” to give the next
Picture. More info on Neat Image here.

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=138

The last picture shows colour added

Hope this helps.

Regards

Ken

[crazyfly1]

Re: Flood-Damaged Photo

Hi

Then on the damaged area:-

Run Filter > Other > Maximum at 1

Ken

Which filter?

I tried the channel mixer. I couldn't get the arms 100%. I tried painting sampled color in and it didn't work. At what point did you fix the washed out areas on the arms and how did you do that?

[Cupcake]

Re: Flood-Damaged Photo

I did this in Painter 12,
after I healed & cloned in CS6
You could also add color if you want


Good job Ken!

[lurch]

Re: Flood-Damaged Photo

@crazyfly: CK told you which filter he used. Filter>Other>Maximum at a setting of 1 pixel.

[nazca13]

Re: Flood-Damaged Photo

I wanted to try this beautiful photo too

[crazyfly1]

Re: Flood-Damaged Photo

Lurch, So he did. And I even quoted it back.
Sometimes, as I get older I find it difficult to read and think at the same time.
I'll run through the process again and use the maximum filter. It'll be my first time ever using that filter.

[Cameraken]

Re: Flood-Damaged Photo

At what point did you fix the washed out areas on the arms and how did you do that?

Once the levels have been adjusted then there is not a lot to fix. If you have adjusted the levels as in my previous post then you should have something like the first picture below.

There is a dark area on her upper left arm which needs to be fixed.

I selected the dark area and lightened it with levels.

The next layer is a “layer set to” Overlay.

Finally a little cloning to remove the remaining marks

The last image shows my layers palette for these corrections

Hope this helps.

Ken

[nazca13]

Re: Flood-Damaged Photo

cameraken, wanted to also thank you for showing me about a filter I rarely use.. I like the idea instead of painting the face in luminosity mode like I did..

[Viviansville]

Re: Flood-Damaged Photo

Beautifully done, Cameraken! Thank you for sharing the process.

[mashny]

Re: Flood-Damaged Photo

Ken:

I've been playing with the image but am not done or satisfied yet (I've had to order more RAM because the high dpi and high bit depth I scanned at made for a huge file, which was creating RAM-related problems on my system; also the original is oversized—about 12x16—so the file is about 800MB). Thanks very much for your help and advice.

Matthew

[Cameraken]

Re: Flood-Damaged Photo

the original is oversized—about 12x16—so the file is about 800MB).

Hi Matthew

800mb

It sounds like the image has been scanned at much too high a resolution
What size of print do you wish to finish up with?
Even if you want to print a 20x16 you would not need such a large filesize.

A 300dpi file at 12x16 should be more than enough. This would still give a massive 50mb file (of which about 35mb would be colour info)

see

http://www.scantips.com/basics1d.html

Regards

Ken