Restoring Scanned Photos

StevenV

I decided to pull some old snapshots out of the photo album this morning just to see what I could do. I know virtually nothing about photo restoration, so any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

I started with a photo of me and my grandmother in front of the long-since-closed 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea attraction at Walt Disney World, Florida, 1973.

Here's what I was able to do with just a little healing brush, cloning, levels and curves.

scanned:

large: http://miltonsports.smugmug.com/photos/66406964-L.jpg

my restoration:

large: http://miltonsports.smugmug.com/photos/66406967-L.jpg

(also blogged in my notebook)

MarkR

You should probably check out Photoshop Restoration and Retouching by Katrin Eismann, if you haven't already. It is a very useful book with lots of helpful hints. It is primarily designed for Photoshop users, but Elements and PSP users could probably pick up a few things from it as well. The only caveat is that it is not a beginner PS book. It assumes you at least know your way around the interface, know what a layer is, etc.

MarkR

Here's the "10 minute fix":

Crop the picture. Use the healing brush to fix the corners and remove the big yucks in the sky.

Auto level for the colors. Ya, I coulda writ curves, but I liked the auto levels results.

Applied the green channel in a new layer as a luminosity channel (optional step, but it helped punch up the picture, IMO). Did a super-quick curve to give the luminosity channel a full tonal range.

StevenV

The Hobbyist wrote:

You should probably check out Photoshop Restoration and Retouching by Katrin Eismann, if you haven't already.

thanks, I'll get a copy and start learnin' and scannin'

StevenV

The Hobbyist wrote:

Here's the "10 minute fix"

That is a bit better than my know-nothing try. I've much to learn.

MarkR

StevenV wrote:

That is a bit better than my know-nothing try. I've much to learn.

I have much to learn too. Luckily Photoshop has a lot of shiny buttons to play with. Because I can't leave well enough alone, here's a version I did by applying the green channel to the blue in overlay mode. Why'd I do that?

Well, I saw that the blue channel was pretty yucky, so I tried applying the green channel to it in different blending modes. I ended up liking the overlay mode so here it is.