Can someone fix this photo of my dad and I?

[daddyslittlegirl]

It looks too bright (or washed out?). I don't have the original photo of this. It is so special to me as this is the day I came home from the hospital. I'd love to be able to see this photo clearer.

Thank you

 

[Tom Mann]

Here's a quick and dirty fix. I'm sure someone will come along and be able to improve on this.

Tom M

 

[Tom Mann]

I tweaked it some more ... at least now his hair shows up better than in my previous version, but I still don't have a clue what sort of ground / soil / grass / alien vegetation is underfoot, so I don't know what to do with it. Is it sand with green creepy things growing on it, LOL, or something else?

T

 

[Eggy]

I had a go at it, denoise and remove blue cast (most)



but could not fix this blotchy and blurry patch

 

[daddyslittlegirl]

Tom Mann: I believe it is dirt or the remains of gravel driveway that's fading away. And the green stuff is grass. The photo looks great! I can't believe how clearer it is. It's amazing how photos can be repaired like this! Thank you!

Eggy: I don't mind that blurry spot. I probably wouldn't have noticed it. I never would have thought I could see the colors again in this photo. The both of you do amazing work on this! Thank you so much!

I'm going to add these to FB... seeing the images this way almost made me cry as my daddy passed away in 2011 from a rare cancer. You both have made my day!! Thank you!

 

[Rich54]

Tom & Eggy... could you please explain how you removed the color cast? I tried this three different ways, but I like yours better than mine. The three ways I tried were (1) a curves adjustment to set the black point to 15-15-15 and the white point to 245-245-245; (2) a levels adjustment to set the gray point; (3) opening the image in Camera Raw and making all the adjustments in there. Mine came out fine, but yours is better.

 

[IamSam]

The photo looks to be a 60's vintage. I don't think it's ever going to look like a modern photo.

It's grainy and low res, that adds to it's vintage character. I didn't want to over sharpen it either.

 

[Eggy]

Tom & Eggy... could you please explain how you removed the color cast? I tried this three different ways, but I like yours better than mine. The three ways I tried were (1) a curves adjustment to set the black point to 15-15-15 and the white point to 245-245-245; (2) a levels adjustment to set the gray point; (3) opening the image in Camera Raw and making all the adjustments in there. Mine came out fine, but yours is better.

This is the way I did it, but I'm sure there are more ways to do this.

Duplicate layer one.
Make layer 2 active.
Add an adjustment layer --> color lookup



Choose 'drop blues'
The image does look odd now but...



The adjustment layer has a layer mask.
With a black brush, brush away the parts where the 'blue' cast is not visible making layer 1 visible



You might want to tweak the image further with the black/white brush with different hardness.

 

[Eggy]

Tom & Eggy... could you please explain how you removed the color cast? I tried this three different ways, but I like yours better than mine. The three ways I tried were (1) a curves adjustment to set the black point to 15-15-15 and the white point to 245-245-245; (2) a levels adjustment to set the gray point; (3) opening the image in Camera Raw and making all the adjustments in there. Mine came out fine, but yours is better.

Oeps, my mistake. I thought you meant the blue color cast in the picture but you meant the haze in the picture!

I'll explain that tomorrow, got to go now.

 

[Tom Mann]

You were already half-way there with your global adjustments - you just have to tweak individual areas to get them dialed in. When the starting image is this poor, I approach the repair almost the same way I approach the colorization of a grayscale image, i.e., select different areas and adjust their colors separately. Of course, this is a lot easier with this image (vs starting with a grayscale image) because a global correction will get one close right off the bat.

It turns out that I actually tried two of the methods you mentioned for my preliminary, global corrections: (a) ACR tweaks; and, (b) setting the black, gray and white points globally. Both produced similar results.

After that, I selected various areas and performed local color corrections on each to get the color, contrast, brightness, etc, even better. Some of the areas that I selectively tweaked were: skin (baby vs guy), chrome, paint job on car, sky seen through trees, shirt, etc.

HTH,

Tom M