Clean up a sepia 8x10 family portrait

[lbj]

This is my first time on this board.  Just received a few pictures of my grandparents from a distant relative.  This family portrait is faded and has a few spots on it where something has been transferred from handling.  The paper it is printed on is textured and the texture seems to have transferred when I scanned the image. 

Can anything be done to even out the background fading and possibly clean up the spots on grandma's left shoulder and the middle children's clothing?  There is some discoloration on the center boy's chin area as well.  Anything one can do will be appreciated.  Thanks.

[kizmiaz]

Hi LBJ, and welcome to the wonderful world of the Photo board

You'll find us all beavering away here from morning till night, having a ball messing around with other peoples photos. Its a great place to hang out.

Anyway. Great photo. I'd kill to have a picture like this of any of my family. They all seem to have gone for the "rush job" approach to photos.

Hope you like it

Glen

------------------------------

(For Sherwood.
This is roughly what I did to it. Using Paintshop Pro 7 and Neat Image
Step 1.
Split channels to RGB. Lightened blue channel. Combined channels. Copied green layer as New Layer and set Blend Mode to multiply. Reduced opacity (This all increased the contrast)
Step 2
Ran the image through Neat Image with low Noise Reduction settings
Step 3
Duplicated background layer, cut out everything but the faded edges and adjusted histogram till the two layers matched.
Step 4
Merged layers and then used clone brush to firstly remove the line between the two layers and then to remove as much damage as I could find
Step 5
Duplicated background layer and set a slight Gaussian Blur on it, then cut out around the family, leaving them showing through sharply against a slightly blurred background
Step 6
Merged layers, changed color of the whole picture, adjusted histogram for the final time and added a border.
Lots of other steps but they were pretty much repeats of everything above)
I think it took longer to write about it than to do it! 

[Wendi]

Hat off to you kizmiaz it's just fabulous what you people can do, and we are glad Sherwood asked too 

Wendi

[lbj]

Glen-
Thank you for the quick and wonderful restore job.  You really cleaned up the picture and got rid of lots of the spots that have gathered over time.  Awesome! 

I've got a couple of questions I hope you can clarify for me...I had to reduce the resolution of the picture to send it to this board from 1.5 mb to just under 500 kb.  Does that affect the final product for printing?  Also, I tried a quick print on sample photo paper I got with my printer and the picture came out sharp, but with distinct blue tones rather than sepia on the original.  Do you think that could be my printer?  I don't have photo ink--just regular color pak on an hp 6110.  I usually just have pics developed at a photo department rather than use my printer.  For distribution to other family members I plan on sending this one to a photo dept. for printing also.

[kizmiaz]

The reduction in resolution will affect the final print, but probably not too dramatically. I'd say that with a scan of this size, you may notice a very slight softness across the image which will be down to the lower resolution. Nothing too bad though, and only really noticable in direct comparison with the original

As for the blue colour cast, it may be an idea to run a printer test page to see if any of the colours are not printing properly. The print heads may need a clean, or you may need a new ink cartridge, although I'd have thought the 6110 would start flashing as soon as it thought the inks were getting low!

Glen