Introduction / Old Photo Resteration

<p>Hi there!</p>

<p>I'm April! I just signed up because I was curious to find out about photo insurance, etc.<br>

First things first....I live in the Tampa Bay Area in Florida. Things are slow here photography - wise. I'm trying to strum up some business though. I moved from Ohio 2 years ago and haven't done much. Ohio was so easy for me...clients just heard about me somehow, but now here. lol</p>

<p>Anyhow, I have a question:</p>

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<p>Ok, I have 8 photos that are of my grandmother and are in terrible shape. Normally, I do retouching myself with little problem Hell, that's my job, but not OLD photos that are this bad and so personal), but my grandmother is picky. haha I'm just stressing and was wondering if someone would be kind enough to look at them and give me some step by step instructions on one or 2 to get me started. The grain is bad and some are really dark and 2 are almost non-existent, they are so faded out multi-colored. The color won't be a problem because she wants them Sepia or B/W. I don't want someone to DO them for me, but I want to learn how to do them myself. I only have CS2 right now...btw. </p>

<p>Thanks!<br>

www.innersanctumphotography.com</p>

 

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<p>I would call this a moderate restoration. Look on the good side -- at least no large sections of the photo were missing. ;-)</p>

<p>Anyway, there are way too many steps to list all of them, and it would take me longer to type them up than the 15 or 20 minutes it took me to tweak the image this far. To start you off, I converted to B&W using a B&W adjustment layer (... I think it made it's appearance as early as CS2). By adjusting this for a heavy yellow/green bias, you go a long way toward reducing the severity of the noise on the face. My next step was to use Neat Image to reduce the noise on the face even further. </p>

<p>After that, I replaced the background. A radial (ie, zoom) blur was fast and convenient, but almost anything whose tone isn't that different from the existing background would work.</p>

<p>I'm sure the retouching experts here and over on retouchpro.com could do a vastly better job, but it gives you an idea of what can be done in 15-20 min.</p>

<p>HTH,</p>

<p>Tom M<br /></p><div></div>

<p>15-20 minutes of work ...</p><div></div>

As most people aren't looking to the 'new user introductions' forum for photo questions, you migt try asking again in the

digital darkroom forum.

 

Welcome to photo.net..

<p>OK WOW! Thats nice work! I will have to try all that...one question...what is "Net Image" lol<br>

That's really all you did????? EEK! I need to work on this more...<br>

THANKS!</p>

<p>I think the background may be a but too "modern" for grams....ANy other suggestions? </p>

<p>I will post this on "digital Darkroom" too thanks.</p>

<p>@Josh - Whoops. I picked up on her question from my "Unified View" of the forums and never even noticed that it wasn't in Digital Darkroom. We'll move the discussion over there.</p>

<p>@April - It's "Neat Image", not "Net Image". It's a commercial noise reduction plugin that seems to do a good job on noise like this. Noise Ninja, Topaz de-noise, etc. and other noise-reduction plug-ins are also good but, IMHO, each is best at one the many different types of noise (eg, salt-and-pepper, paper texture, repeating patterns, etc.). Google each of them, look at previous discussions of them on photo.net, etc. </p>

<p>WRT the choice of background, I agree that it's somewhat inappropriate for the subject. I used it only because (a) it was very easy to do in a freebie demo like this, and (b) I knew that a radial blur of the background would give me the smallest tonal discontinuity around the edges of Granny. Drop in a drape or whatever background you like, but to make your life easy, I suggest it's tonal value be not too different from that of the current background right at the point where it disappears in back of Granny.</p>

<p>WRT your question, "...is that really all you did?", no, there was a lot more. That's why I didn't enumerate each step. For example there was a lot of masking, curves applied locally to bring back contrast in the blown-out areas of her dress, masked sharpening, a final vignette effect, re-sizing and re-sharpening after down-rez'ing, etc. As I said, once you're used to doing this, it takes longer to type up what you did, than it did to actually do the work.</p>

<p>HTH,</p>

<p>Tom M.</p>

 

<p>Welcome to Photo.net. I remember when my dad, who was a professional photographer, would restore old photos. He would start with a copy printed on matte finsish paper and carefully use use black and various shades of gray oil paints to restore. Then he would make a copy negative of the restored print.</p>