Photo Restoration

[o0chad0o]

I've been looking at this scanned photo of my mother for quite some time. Tonight I decided to give a restoration a try. It's not perfect, as this is my first restoration attempt, but I like how it turned out none-the-less.

I spent about two hours monkeying around with different blur settings, sharpening, contrast settings, and added a "warming filter". To remove the wrinkle I just used the clone tool at about 5px.

Any tips or feedback regarding this particular restoration or restorations in general is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

BEFORE:


AFTER:

[BigFuzzy]

I think you did a really good job with the physical damage, well done.

The thing I don't like (and I noticed it immediately) is the skin smoothing. I'm generally not a fan and don't think it was even needed here. The skin smoothing, to me, make the eyes look out of place since the contrast between the sharp eyes and smooth skin just doesn't feel natural.
Granted, it's a taste issue, so ignore at will.

[o0chad0o]

The skin smoothing was just an end result of trying to remove the horizontal lines (paper texture)...which annoyed me. I found a plugin for photoshop that will remove these...but I don't have photoshop, so it didn't really do me any good. The only other method that was mentioned was gaussian blur, which is what I did...then had to sharpen afterward.

Is there another method that could be used to remove the paper texture, other than blurring the overall photo?

Thanks!

[Tetseiga]

Not knowing what software you use it will be hard to advise on that.. I use CS5, and it has a blur brush that can be adjusted to % of blur... using 5% blur, it took the paper grain out w/o distorting the features in the print

[o0chad0o]

Originally Posted by Tetseiga

Not knowing what software you use it will be hard to advise on that.. I use CS5, and it has a blur brush that can be adjusted to % of blur... using 5% blur, it took the paper grain out w/o distorting the features in the print

I used Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3....I have since upgraded to X4, but have yet to mess with this photo anymore. I'll probably get around to it this weekend sometime...

I'll give a brush a whirl instead and see if that yields better results. Thanks!

[o0chad0o]

Ok...here is my second attempt. Used a softening brush instead of gaussian blur, and didn't worry about the horizontal lines in the hair or clothing. Focused more on the face and background.

I stayed away from the eyes when using the softening brush just to see what kind of effect it would have. They do look better and more lively than before...but, still need some practice.