What Would You Do (#46)

[Nicole]

Look, I'm nearly on time for posting a WWYD

This week's picture is from Mr.Intensity, and is an old picture of his two oldest sisters. He said this...

is my two oldest sisters -now 62 and 64yo. -when they were like 7 and 9! they are still like 2 axillary mothers to us all

So I'm sure that any help that can be offered will be very useful.



Available slightly larger

I have to say I think it's great to have an old picture to work on because I know that there are plenty of people (me included) who get tasked to work on old family photos. So I'll be watching intently about fixes on this one.

Now, let's see how you would repair this!

[Teewinot]

Hey great idea to include an old photo! I think everyone will have fun with this one!!

[Jamesc359]

A simple restoration. This is far from perfect, but I feel I have fixed or at least minimized the most obnoxious flaws.

[Nicole]

I think I like Jamesc359's better, but I had a try at it too (can't get better unless you try, right?) So I used some tips that I've seen elsewhere about cloning and healing things. Actually, almost all my fixes were just using the spot healing brush in different ways.



Like I said, I used the spot healing brush, but first I duplicated it to a new layer and ran the Dust & Noise filter at 1px to get rid of some of the major stuff. Then I set that to darken since most of the big scratches were light and by using this filter it softened things up quite a bit. Then I did a high pass filter for sharpening and set the opacity to about 60% to bring out some of the detail. Now the rest was done just using the spot healing brush set either to darken (on light areas), lighten (on dark areas), or normal. I learned that trick because it helps make sure that you only effect the area that you're meaning to. So yeah, lots of spot healing on separate layers.

[Jamesc359]

Thanks Nicole.

You know what I just realized? I completely forgot to tell you how I did it. D'oh!
Well here goes; I used variety of different soft edged (fuzzy) brushes in combination with The GIMP's clone tool to clone out as many of the scratches and spots as I reasonably could. I chose the soft edged (fuzzy) brushes because their edges tend to blend easier with the rest of the image.

That was it, nothing fancy at all, just lots and lots and lots of cloning.

[jiminyClickit]

Some extras even things out here, since the shadows are all sort of confusing. Not knowing for certain what was age, fading, or original location shadowing, I just smoothed as much as seemed appealing.

- Photo was rotated clockwise and "restored" to straighten and keep 100% of original.
- The lower part was selected and lightened, to eliminate the shadow.
- Girl on photo right was selected with part of lighter b/g and darkened to eliminate slight glow from exposure of white clothing.
- Shadows on white dress were lightened to a less unrealistic patchy look.
- Lots of cloning, some smudging, and noise added.
- Entire photo sharpened, softened to blend all work
- Desaturation, and a little contrast to get away from the green.

Larger: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2387/...af03e8a0_b.jpg

[Jamesc359]

Wow, now that is excellent Jiminy, I'm impressed. You've got a lot more patience than I do.

[Nicole]

Originally Posted by Jamesc359

Wow, now that is excellent Jiminy, I'm impressed. You've got a lot more patience than I do.

I know, he puts us all to shame, huh?

[jiminyClickit]

Or . . .

Some things are worth spending time on. This just happens to be one of my things.

Thanks, Jamesc359

[windrider86]

Having never worked on restoring an old image I didnt and still dont have a clue where to start so I improvised. lol
duplicated, converted to black and white with a green undertone. adjusted the contrast up to 30. This is where I cheated cause I had been very carefully trying to use the blemish tool and thought what if i use the noise removal tool? I did and it really smoothed things out. Burned the white areas, sharpened the faces up (I think I did too much) went around the edge with the burn tool set on 30 opacity and shadows. and then went around the edges with the soften tool set on 45 opacity.