Digital Darkroom Assignment #14

cletus

Assignment: Repairing a Photograph

Repairing old and/or damaged photographs is an excellent way to get practice using your photo editing software (and it can be rewarding as well!)

Try to get a scan of an old and/or damaged photograph and see what kind of repairs you can make to it. If you don't have a way to get a scan of an old photo, feel free to use the example image below.

Hints:

1. Typically an old photo is going to be a faded photo. By using adjustments like Layers & Curves you can bring some 'pop' back to the picture.
2. Use layers! Make your repairs on a seperate layer... that way you can change your repairs without further damage to the original.
3. The Rubber Stamp (a.k.a cloning) tool has several blending modes. Try playing around with them and see what effect they have.

Examples:

Before:

After some repairs:

I've put up a simple tutorial here describing one of the repairs I made.

miketaylor01

Does this count as an image I can try to repair?


Ok, im kind of ashmed to say how this photograph was digitized. The original was taken with my old Minolta X-700 about two years ago of my dog on a lake outing. Now I didnt have a scanner at the time but I did have a cheap JVC digital that is about .5 MP. Well i laid the pic down on a table in my kitchen and snapped a digital photo of it and this is the result. Increadibly horrible rendition of the original. Actually this is one in a series of four that I had framed side by side showing the progression of his jump. Maybe I could do all 4 and then post the results. Would give me alotta practice as well. Well let me know if this counts as something I can use. I want to get rid of the huge glaree in the left side.

cletus

miketaylor01 wrote:

Well let me know if this counts as something I can use.

Sure you can use that

lynnma

cletus wrote:

Sure you can use that

Oh good one Cletus.. now I have to go rummage in the cellar for an old photo....

DavidTO

Grandpa Ben, before and after
OK, here's my shot at it.

Before:


After:

lynnma

DavidTO wrote:

OK, here's my shot at it.

Before:


After:

Good job David.. I just did one of my own that was really really bad and it looked worse when I'd finished with it that when I started... back to the drawing board...

lynnma

this is not so good... but better than before maybe... I think what I'm learning with these "repairs" is.. you can't make them look new.. and you can't put back what was not there.. and you can't overdo it...what say you.

DavidTO

lynnma wrote:

this is not so good... but better than before maybe... I think what I'm learning with these "repairs" is.. you can't make them look new.. and you can't put back what was not there.. and you can't overdo it...what say you.

I agree. And I wouldn't really want to make it look new, but I do want to get all those distractions out of the way so that you can relate to the picture better. I didn't repair the damage to the matte on the photo because I like it, it has character and shows the age of the photo without getting in the way of my experience of it.

cletus

Nice work guys

cletus

DavidTO wrote:

I didn't repair the damage to the matte on the photo because I like it, it has character and shows the age of the photo without getting in the way of my experience of it.

The matte looks really good. What you might think about doing is saving a copy of this photo and delete everything but the matte. That way you could use the matte in another image (if you wanted to.)

hutchman

This is a great challenge. I have been wanting to restore a picture of my Dad taken in 1934. He would have been 6 years old. Here's the original.



This picutre has been through a rough life. There are holes, fold marks, and just general deterioration. I also do not like the faded black and white that turns to shades of brown. My cousin just emailed me and said she found this in my Grandpa's Bible. Don't know why he kept it there, but is must have been special to him.

This is my attempt to restore this to not maybe new condition, but what you might have seen in a family photo album 30 years ago. When I print this for my Dad it will not have the matte framing. I will print it with a white border and have a frame built for it.



I used the blue channel ( channel mixer ) for the BW conversion because it had the most contrast without the blownout highlights. The other channels were adjusted to achieve the desired balance. I used the "Cletus" method to slightly darken the facial shadowing and some highlights in his hair.

I tried some sharpening to see what would happen. It just resulted in halos everywhere, no matter how slight the sharpening was.

That's it. A fairly easy fix, but I think it will make him a great Christmas present. There are those in the world who might think otherwise, but the most valuable gift you can give is time. Do something special for your loved ones for Christmas. You can't go wrong.

Hutch

cletus

hutchman wrote:

I tried some sharpening to see what would happen. It just resulted in halos everywhere, no matter how slight the sharpening was.

Hutch,

If you're using Photoshop try this... go ahead and sharpen the image and try to ignore the bright halos. As soon as you're done running the sharpen filter use the Fade command. In Photoshop CS it's located under the Edit menu and it is assigned the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + F on the PC which would be Command + Shift + F on a Mac. I think on some earlier versions of PS it was under the Filter menu. When you run the Fade command you should get a dialog box. Choose Darken for the mode. When you do this you will loose quite a bit of the sharpening effect, but the bright halos will go away.

hutchman

Thanks Cletus,

A new tool that I did not know about! I tried to use this, but I just did not like the results. When the halos were gone, so was the sharpening.

I then used the blur tool on the background to reduce some of the noisey spots.

Using the healing tool, I took out a lot of the black specs on his face and the light noise on his sweater.

I then used the "Cletus Method" to further darken some of the shadowing in his face and hair.

At this point, I set the back and white points in levels. I had not tried this before, and it seemed to work. It make a more contrasty image without the hazy look.

These steps made a much better image. I learned you have to be very carefull with the healing tool because the image you end up with is very flat and unlifelike.

At this point, I tried to sharpen the image again with a layer mask to only sharpen the eyes and mouth etc. I still did not like the results. So - no sharpening. This may be what I end up with.

I will post the my final version for comment later.

Thanks for the tip.

Hutch

pathfinder

cletus wrote:

Hutch,

If you're using Photoshop try this... go ahead and sharpen the image and try to ignore the bright halos. As soon as you're done running the sharpen filter use the Fade command. In Photoshop CS it's located under the Edit menu and it is assigned the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + F on the PC which would be Command + Shift + F on a Mac. I think on some earlier versions of PS it was under the Filter menu. When you run the Fade command you should get a dialog box. Choose Darken for the mode. When you do this you will loose quite a bit of the sharpening effect, but the bright halos will go away.

Cletus - after oversharpening to create halos - go to Edit - Fade Unsharp Mask and then on the drop down menu click either Color OR Luminosity - (and adjust the slider to taste ) both will diminish the oversharpening and the halos - the Color choice will decrease the sharpening more than the Luminosity choice. This Fade Unsharp Mask can also be done in conjunction with sharpening the lightness channel in the LAB color space too.

lynnma

cletus wrote:

Hutch,

If you're using Photoshop try this... go ahead and sharpen the image and try to ignore the bright halos. As soon as you're done running the sharpen filter use the Fade command. In Photoshop CS it's located under the Edit menu and it is assigned the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + F on the PC which would be Command + Shift + F on a Mac. I think on some earlier versions of PS it was under the Filter menu. When you run the Fade command you should get a dialog box. Choose Darken for the mode. When you do this you will loose quite a bit of the sharpening effect, but the bright halos will go away.

Ooooooo cletus thanks... another gem... I also ordered Adobe Photoshop CS Studio Techniques by Ben Willmore. So now I should have every book ever written on PS... (just kidding). Any more gems up you sleeve???? enquiring minds are ready and willing?
Lynn

cletus

lynnma wrote:

Ooooooo cletus thanks... another gem... I also ordered Adobe Photoshop CS Studio Techniques by Ben Willmore. So now I should have every book ever written on PS... (just kidding). Any more gems up you sleeve???? enquiring minds are ready and willing?
Lynn

I've been reading Willmore's book this week, so all my current tricks will soon become your current tricks

cletus

pathfinder wrote:

Cletus - after oversharpening to create halos - go to Edit - Fade Unsharp Mask and then on the drop down menu click either Color OR Luminosity - (and adjust the slider to taste ) both will diminish the oversharpening and the halos - the Color choice will decrease the sharpening more than the Luminosity choice. This Fade Unsharp Mask can also be done in conjunction with sharpening the lightness channel in the LAB color space too.

Path,

I went back and reread Willmore's discussion of this little trick. His procedure involves making two copies of whatever you're going to sharpen, each copy on its own layer. He then sharpens the two layers, puts one layer into Lighten mode, puts the other layer into Darken mode and then adjusts the opacity of each to tune the amount of light and dark haloing (is that a word?).

Interesting stuff...

digismile

On "soft" images like Hutch's, I like to try other ways to sharpen other than unsharp mask. I have used a few different methods with varying success, depending on the image.

The 3 I tried on Hutch's photo involved Highpass filter, emboss, and find edges. The one I liked best today was Highpass filter. These methods help with the definition of distinct edges using blending layers.

Here were the basic steps for highpass filter (hopefully I will remember it well enough ... I'm just arriving at work and don't have PS in front of me!)

1. Duplicate the main layer.
2. Use Filter->Other(?)->Highpass filter on the duplicate layer. This forces everything to either 50% grey or darker for edges. Use a fairly low radius, something like 2-4 (I think I used 3.2 on this photo). You should see an outline of key edges in the photo.
3. Change the layer to Overlay or Softlight (or another of your choice).
4. Adjust Opacity to taste.

Here is Hutch's photo with Highpass (hope you don't mind Hutch!):


Since this is a layer, you can do the usual kind of modifications like layer masking. This means that you can control the effect of the Highpass overlay by masking out parts you don't like. You can see a subtle difference in the hair, eyes, and lips, and a more pronounced difference on the shirt collar.

Embossing is a similar method but can give very pronounced edges. Simply duplicate the base layer, run the emboss filter, and change the layer blending mode to Overlay or Soft light, adjust the opacity. With emboss you have to pick a "direction" and a radius. This method is definitely trial and error, but can give pretty good results.

All the time I have for now. Got to get working! Hope this is helpful.

Brad

hutchman

Brad,

Thanks for the new "trick". If I learn something new about PS everyday, maybe in 5 or 10 years I will be proficient!

I like the effect on my Dad's picture.

I now have a really dumb question. All of the really old pictures I have or have seen are shades of brown. I have always assumed this is due to discoloration and fading of the ink. Is that assumption correct or were these early images shades of brown to start with?

Dunno!

Hutch