Newsprint to new prints

[Mr Guy]

I realize this isn't exactly the intent of this forum, but I hope people don't mind because I'm a bit proud of myself over these. My family has a quintessential picture that was captured by a news photographer after he was discharged by the Navy after WWII. He teased her in letters about the long scruffy beard he grew and she, a seamstress, met him at the docks with a pair of fabric shears to "help" him remove it. The picture has been been on the wall of my grandparents house for my entire life. He recently passed away, and while I was out visiting I realized how deficient I'd been in giving my grandmother pictures of our family to hang. To make up for it, the grandkids chipped in with an 8x10 digital picture frame filled with tons of our pictures. It wouldn't be right to let his picture fade away any more, so I had my sister scan it in for me and I included it in our gift.

A lot of the abuse the picture has taken over the years is hard to spot once reduced to the board's size requirements, but I think you'll get the general idea.


The original, as scanned in by my sister (Reduced for forum):



The retouched version on the picture frame (Reduced for forum):





I, unfortunately, didn't intend to ever use it as a tutorial, so I'll have to go off my vague recollections of what I did, hopefully hitting all the important bits.

The first obvious steps were to rotate the image and crop it slightly. I went beyond simply cropping the edges out in order to compose the image in a standard frame size.

Once that was done, I debated on addressing the faded colors or noise in the image. I decided that tackling the colors with that much noise may lead to artifacts, so I used the Gimps despeckling filter in multiple passes until I gradually got what I wanted without too much loss. There was too much noise for an unsharp mask, so I was stuck at that point.

Then it was on to fixing the colors. I don't know if there's a preferred or better way to do this, but I tackled it using the limited tools I'm comfortable tinkering with. First, I simply jacked up the contrast. Then, I countered some of the yellow by skewing the colors "Color Balance" tool toward Blue and Magenta. Next, I desaturated the image to take some of the red back out. Finally I turned down the brightness to restore some of the vividness that had been lost.

Once that was done, it was time to turn to outright blemishes. Most of the speckles in his beard and uniform were handled with the clone stamp and way too much free time.

For the scratch in the upper right corner, I used the clone stamp but it created too much noticeable repetition. My way around that, to make it less noticeable, was to blur out the region, add HSV Noise, then reblur it to match the rest of the backdrop.

The crease across her hair was more difficult. For the bit across her shoulder it was clone to the rescue, but I couldn't make it look right in her hair. Finally, I partially erased it with the clone tool, but then used the burn to darken the rest of the crease to match her hair tone. It's not perfect, but I was trying to avoid obvious duplicate curls in her hair.

Finally, as a last touch for my Grandpa's personality, I went after his eyes and brightened them up by simply desaturating the whites of his eyes and cleaning them up. I feel like I recaptured a bit of the twinkle that was fading in the original.


Hope this isn't too far off from helpful for someone, but I'm proud of it. It's become one of those pet things I can't stop tweaking as I notice something in the result.

[RussHeath]

Nice result! You kept the feeling of the original and managed to restore it quite a bit. The shot is absolutely priceless, and I think it's worth any amount of work to preserve such a memory.

[slycat_blaze]

It's nice how you still retained the vintage feel to it while removing the damages... I like it!

[wulf]

Two tiny details might be worth considering:

1. There is a dark line in the bottom right. You have almost cropped it out - a touch of the clone brush would finish the job without making the picture any smaller.

2. That area between them is very bright (probably flash bouncing off the background). You could use a translucent layer to tone it down a bit. That will draw attention away from the distance between them and back to the connection.

Wulf

[Mr Guy]

Good catch on that line. Now it's going to bug me.

As far as the translucent layer, I'm not sure how to go about that. When it comes to modifying portions of the image, I'm always paranoid about noticeable effects at the boundaries. Noticeable "edge effects" is one of those things that drives me crazy in touched up photos; any suggestions on how to avoid them?

[wulf]

You can start with something too solid but then experiment with different layer modes and opacity settings so it blends well in the centre. Then apply a layer mask, probably starting fully black (transparent) and use a soft tool like the airbrush to paint white (opacity) back in.

Wulf

[pinggoy18]

this is a great thread for learning, i have to find those old pix from the basement, again i appreciate ur taking time to share this photo

[jiminyClickit]

Mr Guy,

Here's another view of the results one may get from adding a layer of gray, in Darken Mode, at about 10% and adjusting Contrast and Darken until that telltale flash spot blends better. After that, it's just what you did, cloning out defects.



Larger: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3160/...051ee806_b.jpg

Out of curiosity, I boosted the red and yellow, and the skin tones and red handle of the shears came out some. I selected the couple and inverted to adjust only the background, adding just a touch of green, and then lightened the couple a little more also.



You're right about this being one of those things you may go back to time and again, and you have really good material to practice with, and experiment. Thanks for showing this and I hope these two results will inspire further work on your other photos. It's a noble endeavor.

[Loose_Canon]

Originally Posted by jiminyClickit

This is the best by far in my opinion.

I was going to suggest also eliminating the pinkish cast by colorizing to a sepia or brown tone. Go to Image / Adjustments / Hue-Saturation; tick the Colorize box and move Hue to 20 and Saturation to 10. Adjust and season to taste. That would be an appropriate treatment for this nice old photo.

[jiminyClickit]

Pinkish cast is added after first example, as a "wonder what this would do" moment. First one is also closer to original and rotogravure I remember seeing as a child in the Sunday papers.

Hoping Mr Guy returns soon, to see what his eyes tell him (as he looks at his original).