Photo Restoration and Colourising.

[tallted]

wow keith,
It is a tough one. The little boys lower face is obliterated completely, don't know how you would reconstruct that.
In the case of the eye use the opposite eye and flip it horizontally and shade it down a bit after you position it where it looks like it belongs.  The rest is sort of do able but really tough.  I would suggest that you scan it in at about 800 resolution or higher.  That makes it easier to zoom up and work on a smaller section to rebuild it.
PM me if you have any questions.  I am sure ants could help alot too.
Ted

[Keith Bateman]

Hi Ted,

Thanks for that about the "eye" - thats the sort of experienced information which is valuable - I was thinking of doing same for the coat etc - but hadn't thought about flipping his eye!! 

Great - wish I could have blocked off my ex-wifes mouth as easy as time has done to the boy!!

Will have a go - look out for a PM in the future!!!!

Cheers

Keith

[deadants]

I have to  agree with the others. Everything except the  boys lower face is recoverable. Unless you can find another photo of the boy, I'd say you would only be able to repair his face from guesswork. That is starting  to mess with historical evidence to much.

You really do need to scan the photo to a much higher dpi so you can get  down to the details.
Also, do it in small steps. Consentrate on just one part till you think it looks respectable. Take your time. You won't complete this job in one sitting until you get a bit more experence under your  belt, or mouse.

Try the tutorials for  photo restoration for PSP here http://www.designertoday.com/tabindex-14/tabId-39/itemid-1212/DesktopDefault.aspx

Here's the big list of tutorials http://www.psplinks.com/content/Photo_Retouching.html


it's a curly one, but a great challange.

deadants

[Keith Bateman]

Hi deadants ,

Thanks for those sites - will go away and have a good read - and play.

One problem is we don't know who the boy is - so will have to work round that  - leave it to the last perhaps.

Another thing to learn!! 

Thought now I was retired that I would have stopped learning new skills - seems just the opposite - must have been lazy before!! 

Cheers

Keith

[deadants]

Thought now I was retired that I would have stopped learning new skills

Hi Keith,
      You should try and learn something new  every day.

I hope Paul gets that photo out of the shed soon.


deadants

[Paul E]

I hope Paul gets that photo out of the shed soon.

So does my wife!  I'll get working on the case. 
From memory, its a very intriguing photo - can't work out whether it may be regimental.  I'll sort it as soon as I can - may have to just be a digital photo rather than a scan though.

Best wishes

Paul

[tallted]

Keith,
Have a look at my previous pics on this thread.  I did recover the girl in the tear, but we did not know her or the other lad in the picture.  The other girl was my aunt, the boy to the left my uncle and the boy to the right my dad.
I took the liberty of eliminating those our family did not know to get a great pic of those people we knew and were related to.
So the decision is you and may save a lot of concern over who the boy was.
Ted

[Keith Bateman]

Hi Ted,

I noticed you had removed the girl - but not the boy as well - until you said - yes that might be an option - perhaps make a separate one of my boy for later when we work out if he is ours??

Thanks for your help - have started on an easier one to see how it goes!

Cheers

Keith

[deadants]

just to Highlight the problems faced with Ted's photo, I have removed the major areas of destruction. The next step is to start rebuilding this photo with bits of other photos. In Katrin Eismann's book "Restoration & Retouching" She shows how to  do this by recreating the scene with the help of some of your friends dressing in siilar clothes and taking a new photo, then extracting the parts that you need. Katrinn Eismann calls this creating a parts library. You could also look on the web for similar period poses and copy parts from them. Those faces are the big worry.

http://www.digitalretouch.org/

deadants