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Hi I'm New! I need help combining two photos for color restoration.


LisaH

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Hi Gurus!

A friend of mine gave me two copies of his family's portrait photo which was taken about 20-30 years ago. The 8x10 is severely faded but in otherwise excellent condition. He had someone at his company work on it in Photoshop a few years ago and it is cleaned up nicely but is very much lacking color.

Recently he came upon another version of the same family portrait photo - this time a laminated wallet size, which has a lot more of the original color left. He asked me if I could scan the photo and enlarge it for him since the color is much better on the wallet size. Unfortunately it could not be removed from the lamination which was very scratched up. I used a fine grit buffing compound to smooth the surface of the plastic and then I lacquered the surface and did a scan of it that way. It looks pretty good except I am loosing a lot of detail because there is cracking/crazing underneath the lamination which we couldn't even see until I resurfaced it.

Long story short, I would like to somehow use the perfect detail from the faded photo and the color from the good photo to make a one very nice restored version. This is not something I have ever done in Photoshop before and I'm unfamiliar with what approach to take. I have done a lot of clean up work on individual old photos but never have done anything involving combining elements from separate photos. I am using Adobe Photoshop CS5 and I'm using an Epson Perfection V600 photo scanner and using the scanner's built in color correction for both versions of the image. I'm looking for directions or tutorials or perhaps just a suggestion as to what tools I should research to make this happen.
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Thank you!
 

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Last edited:
Hi Lisa and welcome to PSG.

You really can't combine the two photos. You can either clean up the enlarged wallet size that was recently found or you can colorize the already cleaned version.

You have a perfect reference to colorize the already cleaned up image so you know what the colors should be. This is what I would do.

Here is a great place to start learning the colorization process: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Photoshop+colorizing+a+photo

When I colorize, I isolate the area to be colored and use that selection on a layer mask connected to one of the different types of adjustment layers available in Ps. Usually a Hue & Saturation adjustment layer set to colorize. Take a look at a bunch of the tutorials from the link above and see what might work best for you. Let us know if you have any questions.
 
Having said that, I did try an overlay where I placed the wallet version over the older cleaned up version and set it's blending mode to multiply.......................

...........you might could work with that!

View attachment 68579
 
Hi Sam,

The overlay looks pretty dang good! Actually, I would like to try doing the same overlay process that you did except with the larger size original scan Tiff files. Wouldn't that yield an even better result? Could you walk me through what you did there? I'm excited to learn how myself. How did you get the images to line up / layer so perfectly? Thank you so much for your work and help!!
 
Hi Sam,

The overlay looks pretty dang good! Actually, I would like to try doing the same overlay process that you did except with the larger size original scan Tiff files. Wouldn't that yield an even better result? Could you walk me through what you did there? I'm excited to learn how myself. How did you get the images to line up / layer so perfectly? Thank you so much for your work and help!!

As I said in post #3, I placed the wallet version over the older cleaned up version first. I lowered the wallet versions opacity down where I could "see through it". I then used the 'Free Transform' function (Cmd/Cntrl + T) to match the wallet version to the cleaned up version.........I did have to use warp in a few areas. Once I had it matched, I returned the wallet versions opacity to 100% and then set it's blending mode to multiply. I then added a curves adjustment layers and lightened up the whole image. I would probably make some other color adjustments as well.

If I were to continue, I would make a stamp visible layer (select the uppermost active layer, then hit Shift + Option/Alt + Cmd/Cntrl + E), add a new layer above that and get to work with the Clone Stamp Tool, Spot Healing Brush Tool, and the Brush Tool to clean it up.
 

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