Is this photo retrievable?

[Alstonquik9]

I would be grateful for some advice in improving the quality of this photo of my grandfather and some of his friends taken about 1920. Where do i start?

Photoshop CS6, iMac 10.10.3

[joe_7]

Re: Is this photo retrievable?

There are probably better ways, but an easy start is to blur it just enough to get rid of the pattern, then try to sharpen it back up using unsharp mask.

[Alstonquik9]

Re: Is this photo retrievable?

Thanks Joe. Is there a video tutorial which explains the process in some more detail?

[Gary]

Re: Is this photo retrievable?

Started with de-noising and ended up using a bit of everything!

[rimjhim]

Re: Is this photo retrievable?

Use stamp tool with very low opacity. Finally use smudge, dodge and burn tool for finishings.A very long proccess but can be completely restored.

[jrevere]

Re: Is this photo retrievable?

I'm reading "Digital Restoration from Start to Finish" by Ctein. Second edition. Its kinda dated but still a good read. I'm trying to wrap my head around some of the more in depth material. Check your library and see if you can get your hands on a copy. Maybe you'll understand more of the advanced techniques better than me. (Then please share!)

[Emily Watson]

Re: Is this photo retrievable?

The photo seems to be very old and without much details in it. Even though I appreciate your venture to restore it. Since the photo does not have much grey content, you have to smooth the threshold edges between black and white to get some gery elements. Surface blur will help you to achieve this (radius = 22 to 24 and threshold = 60). Just exclude the upper part of the image from the surface blur.

After that in a new duplicate layer you can remove dust and scratches(filter noise-dust and scratches -radius =1,threshold = 0)from this stage you can start painting the details with brush tool(9%opacity in a new layer)

I hope you will get a better result.

[4N6site]

Re: Is this photo retrievable?

Looks like this photo was badly damaged (wrinkled?) even before it was rasterized. I have applied FFT filtering with the FFT plug-in from 4N6site.com to obtain the attached result. More detail is just not there and can only be added using fantasy...