Can I fix this color damage with a median filter?

[3pco]

The attachment is a portion of a picture of my mother in law and two pets. It shows severe damage of some kind (?). I had to scan it through glass, as it is stuck to its frame.
My question is how to approach the badly damaged region to the left of the animals. In his book, Ctein uses a mask-and-Curves method to darken a region prior to applying the Median filter. Will this work here? Can someone tell me how to apply the pre-darkening to a color print? Should I just use curves or add a tint?
Any other suggestions are more than welcome. Thanks to all who take the time to look!

[Tony W]

Re: Can I fix this color damage with a median filt

... My question is how to approach the badly damaged region to the left of the animals. In his book, Ctein uses a mask-and-Curves method to darken a region prior to applying the Median filter. Will this work here? Can someone tell me how to apply the pre-darkening to a color print? Should I just use curves or add a tint?
Any other suggestions are more than welcome. Thanks to all who take the time to look!

IMO you cannot recover information as it is no longer there in your copy due to, I imagine water damage.

Any underlying image data both colour and luminosity is gone. Using the Median filter through a mask is not going to work as takes information from surrounding pixels to fill the damaged area and the surrounding areas of course are already damaged therefore likely to result in a mushy mess.

[0lBaldy]

Re: Can I fix this color damage with a median filt

I would first use the FFT/IFFT filter 'Remove photopaper texture from old photo'
or its equivalent in Image Analyzer (which I use because it seems more intuitive)
I deleted some of the damage by cropping, then proceed with a bit of clean-up.... reconstructing her lap, arm, and the front of the dog seems problematic to me soooo
I just left it as is

[3pco]

Re: Can I fix this color damage with a median filt

Thanks to both of you. I am probably incapable of painting in the missing parts if they can't be reconstructed, but (as a newbie at this) I'd like to work on this for practice, and I'm grateful for your support.
OlBaldy, can you recommend a FFT plug-in for Phostoshop (I use CS6 on a Mac). I am looking on this site at a contribution from Cadencia in 2011 (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/sof...photoshop.html).
Thanks again
3pco

[3pco]

Re: Can I fix this color damage with a median filt

Or is Neat Image the same as FFT?

[0lBaldy]

Re: Can I fix this color damage with a median filt

FFT plugin is built into ImageJ 1.30 and later. ImageJ is a double-clickable Mac OS X application. Includes ImageJ64, which uses Java 1.6 in 64-bit mode on Intel Macs running OS X 10.5 or later.

From Image J site: "Limitations: The images or selection must be square and the width and height must be a power of 2 (256x256, 512x512, etc). RGB color images are not supported." Which should create no great problems.

[0lBaldy]

Re: Can I fix this color damage with a median filt

Or is Neat Image the same as FFT?

Nope, totally different approach

[3pco]

Re: Can I fix this color damage with a median filt

I tried the ImageJ FFT/IFFT with little effect. The learning curve for that SW seems pretty steep, so I probably did it wrong. Will work at it some more.
I did manage to fill in the white areas with appropriate color by blurring a layer under a mask, followed by a median filter. But of course, there was no detail under there. Likely a lost cause, Wife will be disappointed. Anyways, I'm learning much from the exercise and thank you for your help!

[nrsm]

Re: Can I fix this color damage with a median filt

OK - High res color scan (at least 600), then FFT filter to get rid of the texture. the majority of the animals are there and you can see where her arm lays behind the animals, same with her skirt. I would borrow pieces from other photos that you can find on the internet or your own stash, making sure to warp them to the correct proportions and size (you can still tell from photo) and make sure you fix the grain and color so they match. Regarding the background, I am not sure what the big dark splotch is, so maybe just fill that area in with the wall. Good luck!