Repairing light damaged photo

[John Hay]

Is there any method using PS 6.0 or Photpaint 10.0 to repair partially damaged photo exposed to light - most damage appearing in red channel some appeari ng in green channel and little or none showing in blue channel. Low res picture attached. Are there newer programs that are better for this job?

[Doug Nelson]

The details can be mostly restored using any software that can edit individual channels, though for restoring the color you might get into manual colorization. You'll probably end up rebuilding the blue channel.

PS6 is well up to both tasks. I believe I've seen similar examples posted here before, but can't seem to find any right now. Perhaps some other member might remember where they're located.

[Vikki]

I don't recall seeing one here, but I have a similar one on my website.
I would fix for the bad side, and use a layer mask to blend the two.

[Ed_L]

Originally posted by Doug Nelson
I believe I've seen similar examples posted here before, but can't seem to find any right now. Perhaps some other member might remember where they're located.

I might be wrong, but wasn't there a challenge of a girl standing in a garden setting that had a problem like that??

Ed

[Duv]

Your basic analysis of the channels is OK except that the blue channel has no detail whatsoever. I found I had to do subtle blends of the red, green channel, convert to LAB and lighten the lightness channel, copy, cancel LAB and paste back into RGB. I found I still had a tremendous amount of cloning, patching and coloring was still required. This would have been a much easier task had the blue channel been in better shape. I hope others have some better ideas.

Cheers
Duv

[kathleen]

i submitted a photo like this, not as a challenge, just in a thread, in 2001; can't find it in a search under my name, think it had the words "yellow streaks" in it.

DJ offered a solution which worked fairly well, and it involved painting on the channel with the damage with opposite color, i think. i remember painting with magenta on green or maybe vice versa. wish i could find the post. it improved it but wasn't perfect.

hth

kc

[John Hay]

Thank you people out there for the advice so far - I am working in several options but interesting in this modern tech age there is no quick fix

[kathleen]

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30

john,

that is link to thread aforementioned. the photo link is still good, but tiny. nope, nothing quick fix about it at all.

[roger_ele]

John, I hope you don't mind. I have been swamped at work and have needed the break that working on your image provided, now that work is starting to catch up...

I played with channels and such to start with. Then gave up and made the best black & white, then brought it into a new layer on top of the background in luminosity blending mode. This got the brightness right (middle too faded to start with).

Then flattened and used coloring layers with painting and cloning...

Roger

[John Hay]

Roger - very impressive, looked like a fair bit of work but very good - now I will have to try and learn to as well. Thank you