What's new
By:
Photoshop Gurus Forum

Welcome to Photoshop Gurus forum. Register a free account today to become a member! It's completely free. Once signed in, you'll enjoy an ad-free experience and be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Photo restoration issue


nitea

nitea

Well-Known Member
Messages
93
Likes
100
I was doing a restoration project for the community center that i work for, But I got an issue with the lighter spots in the surrounded area. I planed to make a selection of the areas, use hue/ saturation to desaturate and then equal the tones between light and dark making an adjustment dodge and burn layers. But I think there are other methods as well which can solve this issue. You can download the untouched original version of the pic from the link and feel welcome to give a try whit your versions and suggestions of this project.

I will appreciate your opinion and help.

Here is my work in progress and the issue:
sedqnka3 copy.jpg sedqnka3.jpg

Here is a link to the original image:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_K7Grkw0jGcUm1MaVQ5a3Y2TU0/edit?pli=1

P.S the image represent an reproduction of women harvesters, who sing while working, wearing a traditional Bulgarian clothing :) My progress till now is to do some healing using spot healing tool and stamp tool.
 
Last edited:
I still think your on the right track with this one Diyana by using the Clone Stamp Tool, Spot Healing Brush Tool, or the Brush Tool to clean these areas up. I'm not sure that you could get an accurate enough selection of the anomaly to apply an H&S that would go unnoticed. But let's see who else weighs in on this matter.

In the meantime, I will try a few methods to see what works best for me.
 
Sam...does that link work for you?

Darned if I can get anything relating to an image....just the silly google drive thang.....My silly google drive thang.

What is one supposed to do with that?

Regards.
MrTom.
 
I've run into those light spots quite often when working with restoration of damaged or old photographs. I've tried curves, hue/sat - everything. The best, easiest way is to clone stamp and/or healing brush them out. I usually try to clone them out on a blank layer with the "sample" set to "current and below". That way if it doesn't work out or doesn't look how you want you can either manipulate the clone stamp layer or delete it and start over. Nothing is more frustrating than having to get rid of other corrections you've made just because a clone stamp doesn't turn out!!
 
I cleaned up the areas in question (quickly) using the techniques I described above.....

sedqnka3Restoration_01.jpg

I see I still need to work on the glares at the bottom a little more.
 
Very nice Sam, I like what you've done with the door in the upper right
I just woke up... and I stated fixing, will post later.

Sierraccr I also agree with you that using whenever kind of brush tools should be on a different layer.
 
I realize that you might be working under constraints that we aren't aware of, but if I could, I would try to even out the illumination in the repaired version. For example, I would try to bring out more detail around legs and feet of the women, adjust the brightness and contrast of the door so it attracts less attention (LOL), etc.

To illustrate this, I took Sam's very nice result and played with it a bit in ACR, then with some dodging and burning in PS.

Tom
 

Attachments

  • sedqnka3Restoration_01-tjm01-acr-ps01a-01.jpg
    sedqnka3Restoration_01-tjm01-acr-ps01a-01.jpg
    255.7 KB · Views: 41
Last edited:
Thank you Tom Mann,
Actually there are no any requirements for this project. The initiative to restore them is all mine. I found them (about 15 photos) ready to be thrown. They were glued several times on different places as i could see in the originals that i took with me and also damaged by the years. So I just want to restore them for practice and return to the place where they belong. I apology but just now I saw that i forgot to wrote in my very first post that everyone are welcome to give a try and suggest their version of the photo, that was the point to upload the scanned untouched photo (Thank you Sam one more time for fixing the links for me). My brain was thinking a step forward last night. :) So I will rewrite it ...

I also plan my next step to be bringing more details and fix the contrast, also I think that i will turn it to a B&W version, in that way I will get rid of the color distortions (Already tried to reduce the color noise but the result didn't satisfied me)

Here is where I came from this morning. I tried the Hue/Saturation, but as Sam said didn't get a nice result, so I used clone stamp, brush & healing brush tool (how all the recommendations till now) and bit dodge and burn on some areas
On a second look I realized that the black spot, where the door blends, actually is a face, so I tried to restore it a bit.
sedqnka3 reworked.jpg

I also use a few tricks ...
I ran add noise filter set to 1.00 % / Distribution - Uniform and monochromatic checked over the healing/ cloned layer. In this way i can blend them a bit with the original texture of the photo.
After I finished to fix the areas I add a curved adjustment layer with blend mode set to multiply then played with the opacity till i got satisfied.
 
Last edited:
Thank you guys
Unfortunately I had another issue with this photo. I was out for the day and when I came back and tried to open the PSD file a message appeared.
problem.png

As i see my file is broken, so i will keep restoring for the last one I uploaded here. But do you know what may be the reason of this damage ?
 
I'm sorry to hear this! Was all the Photoshop changes you made to the file lost?
 
Yes... if i hit ok ... the file opens but all is fill with black and i don't have any layers, just black BG layer and that's it.
 
Damn that's a shame.
Why does PS always do this with your best work.....and never when you just muck about?

Can you upload the file?
It may be recoverable, no guarantees mind, but you never know.

Such a bummer.

Regards.
MrTom.
 
Downloaded OK.

No promises but I'll certainly have a look for you.

Regards.
MrTom.
 
Tom Mann said:
I realize that you might be working under constraints that we aren't aware of, but if I could, I would try to even out the illumination in the repaired version. For example, I would try to bring out more detail around legs and feet of the women, adjust the brightness and contrast of the door so it attracts less attention (LOL), etc.

To illustrate this, I took Sam's very nice result and played with it a bit in ACR, then with some dodging and burning in PS.

Tom
Click to expand...

Tom started me on the "use ACR" ....I think it does make a difference on images like this one. I find it easier than masking so many areas for exposure differences


I think you are doing a great job...I am learning more daily!
 
Back
Top