Photo restoration HELP!!!!!!!!!

[Juanita]

This is a photo of a friends mother, the only photo anyone has, originally from a locket

I started by scanning the pic at 3 times the original size, original size was a little larger than my thumbnail.

Then using photoshop cs4 and a filter called Alien Skin image doctor, I started to repair each scratch individually, spent almost 10 hours just repairing some of the damage.

I found that the edges of the picture were almost impossible to repair due to the damage caused by pushing the photo into the locket, so I ended up having to use "Cut it Out" another filter to remove the actual head from the original scan.

I then placed her head into a new image.

I still wasn't happy with some of the work and thought it needed toning down a little, and that would hopefully disguise some of the damage still visible.

So I placed the entire new image into Auto FX Software "Dreamsuite" filter and gave it an antique effect.

I am still not really happy with the result, does anyone have any suggestions please.

And worse still, I have the opposite locket picture of her father to complete, and that photo is far far worse than this one for damage.

Thank you for all your help in advance

Juanita

[Stryker]

You seem to have done a very decent job of restoring the picture from the original locket photograph. I am referring to the first image here. I'd probably cut out the shoulder part as it is adding nothing to the image and retain only the head upto the neck or maybe just below.

But I am not able to understand why you want to "damage" it again with the vintage effect you have used for the second one. Simply boosting the contrast on the first should make it a pretty good restoration job, especially after the number of hours you have spent on it in the first place.

[J.D. Dickerson]

Hi Juanita,

Your restoration looks good. Here are some of the things that have helped me, hopefully you'll find them of use:

When dealing with images with this much wear and tear, befriend the clone, patch, dodge, and burn tools. Here's a way you can use the dodge/burn tool to help restore an even tone to the areas that have been damaged by age (and most any image with skin): for darker areas, grab your dodge tool, hardness 0%, exposure 1-10% (I usually stay on the lower end of that range, about 1-3%), and go over the areas where darker tones distract from the image. Use the burn tool in the same way for the lighter tones. I've attached a quick example using your pic. Compare the tones in her cheek from the original vs. the dodged.

I hope this helps. Good luck with the father's pic!

[Juanita]

Thank you both so much for taking the time to answer some of my queries

Love the extra work you have done to the pic, will now spend some time on dodge and burn, have always been a little afraid to use them until now.

[angah]

Hi Juanita..

For me.. i would love to see much more detail on the pic.



First of all i copy layer then set it to multiply. I do this a couple of times. then i copy another layer and set it to overlay and reduce the opacity to 70%.
After that i clean the pic using healing brush. copy the layer and add gaussian filter to create smoothness for the skin.

[daddyoproductions]

There's more than one way to skin a cat, but if you're doing ten hours of restoration and still not happy maybe it's time to try a different method. Monochromatic photos are pretty forgiving as far as repairs if you work zoomed in. I like to use the patch tool in Photoshop cause it retains texture and lets you basically cut and paste over parts from other parts in the photo. Here's a quick 10 minute edit (the face and shirt can still use some cleanup):

Auto Levels layer
ctrl alt shift e to stamp visible layers
patch tool on the stamp layer
stamp visible layers again
run noiseware plugin (or other noise removal method)
adjust opacity of noiseware layer, mask out eyes
adjust brightness and contrast

I didn't touch the background because I would probably just cut it out and put it on a new background, but it gives you an idea anyway. Hope that's okay.

[daddyoproductions]

p.s. to make a non destructive dodge/burn layer, ctrl alt click new layer button in Photoshop, select 50% gray and soft light blending mode. Then you can burn and dodge tool on this layer and it's not permanent and you can adjust the opacity.

[moby]

Originally Posted by angah

Hi Juanita..

For me.. i would love to see much more detail on the pic.



First of all i copy layer then set it to multiply. I do this a couple of times. then i copy another layer and set it to overlay and reduce the opacity to 70%.
After that i clean the pic using healing brush. copy the layer and add gaussian filter to create smoothness for the skin.

I agree with you.
I would first, arranged levels after brightnes & contrast, and then switch to sepia

[edbayani]

i tried my hand by using the rubber stamp, burn and dodge tool set to 2 pixel size anf varying the opacity and cloning randomly to prevent forming of pattern. i used a small brush size to maintain the grainy look. before i began, i looked at the histogram at levels and adjusted the black and the white pointer a little to the center to increase the contrast and to have more density .

[mahree]

I wanted to try and keep the integrity of the original photo. The color was way weird after I finished masking out the cracks etc. The color could use more tweeking. I over did the healing in her collar but didn't go back to fix it.

1. cloned and healed out the cracks and fly away hair
2. healed the inevitable harsh pixels that come from scanning
3. burned and dodges details under nose, in the eyes, lips, teeth, lace collar and ribbon in her hair
4. curves adjustment layer
5. Color balance adjustment layer
6. Selected an oval shape around photo with a 75px feather/ inverse
7. Used soft edge brush to paint out the rigid edges (Which looks pretty half@ss now that I really look at it)
8. Resized the canvas because the picture was a bit small in the center

Hope you like it.