A strange restoration...

[gregbowyer]

Hello All,

OK, so my job is photo restoration but this one has me a little stumped... I can fix it through d&b or cloning out the damage but I'm wondering if anyone out there is familiar with this issue and has a quicker method to fix it?

The pink isn't an issue, it's more the dark grey patches (her neck and chin) and the strange selective fading out of other areas (like his hair) that are driving me mad - any ingenious solutions?

Thanks in advance!

[Wolly55]

Re: A strange restoration...

Hello Greg
I had something similar once, not as bad as you have, but appeared in the highlight area, so i scanned the image 4 different positions (normal, right, upside down, left) , so the scanner light picked up different details each time, and then blended together.
You probably tried the above already, but thats what worked for me. Once blended together it was just a matter of cloning areas back in. From your image i can see its on the roof of the church as well.

[gregbowyer]

Re: A strange restoration...

Thanks for your response Wolly55, I have indeed already scanned it 4 times (I always have to do that for any old prints that have a texture to the paper anyway) but it didn't help. This isn't "silvering" or "silver mirroring" which is what I believe you are describing. That's why this is so odd... All the problem areas are totally matt so I'm curious as to what process (chemically) is happening here. I'd upload more high res sample images but the 100kb limit makes it difficult... What's really strange is that it doesn't seem to be specific to highlights or shadows... Very odd!

[Wolly55]

Re: A strange restoration...

Hi Greg
I did a quick search for something like that and came across this site, you might find something on there.
http://gawainweaver.com

[gregbowyer]

Re: A strange restoration...

Thanks for this Wolly55, very interesting! I ended up going down the long winded cloning route in theend...

[mikemorrell]

Re: A strange restoration...

Yes, I come across this kind of damage quite often but I haven't found a quick and easy way of repairing it. Depending where it is, two things that sometimes help to a certain extent are:
- Separation of colr/tone:
* Paint over the damaged area with the 'normal' skin color in a new layer.
Adjust this as necessary to blend in. The skin tones will still be different.
Pwith masked curves layers at different opacity levels. Add small variations (highlights/shadows) via the same method.

[Nezbitten]

Re: A strange restoration...

If you can exaggerate or "enhance" the colour in the colour scan, so that those areas become more "tinted" maybe to blue you can then use "convert to black and white" to help balance things out.

[sergio2263]

I've had a quick go got rid of the stains and basically colourised the photo a bit. Need a bit more work but just showing there's a possibility to repair the photo.