Photo Restoration and Colourising.

[Keith Bateman]

Hi deadants,

Asked around about the plane came up with this:

The registration sure looks like VH-BQQ in which case it will be the one
 in the attachment although the details say it was re-registered as BXE.
 Look at this website.
 VHBQO was destroyed in a crash so I'm sure it is not the one in your
 photo.
 Those markings definitely look like BQQ and it looks like it wouldn't be
 flying too far from that photo of yours. It looks like it's parked in the
 outback somewhere!!.
 Anyway it is a Percival P26B Proctor 1 if it is the redex one which I
 think it is.
 Check this site.

 http://www.edcoatescollection.com/ac1/austb/Austcivb.html

Cheers

Keith

[deadants]

Well Keith, that's an absolute mind blower. I just showed my mother and she set me straight. Apparently she took the photograph using a Box Brownie camera on her honeymoon. She even knows the exact date she took it. January 19 1953. It was flying out of a paddock near Toowoon Bay, which is about halfway between Sydney and Newcastle.

Mystery solved. I love it when you get the story from the eyewitness. I think I need to tie my mother down with the photo album and get the story on all her photos.

Here's one my grandfather took in 1930 near Taree, on the manning River.

[deadants]

Keith, Just thought I'd let you know. I sent an email to the guy who runs the web site for the Aussie airplanes. He confirmed that the photo we have here, VH BQQ is the same plane. I also sent him a copy of the float plane and he seemed very excited, especially with the VH UIH rego. Apparently Float Planes were fairly rare in Australia at the time. The VH prefix started  in 1930 so this was one of the first planes to have the new VH rego.
 
I had to rescan the float Plane at a higher Resolution for the guy and he is going to put in on his web site.

deadants

[Keith Bateman]

Hi deadants,

Just shows you - help someone - someone helps you!!   

Now he's happy as well.

Bet you didn't know you had valuable information kept in the box!!

Cheers

Keith

[deadants]

The Aussie Plane guy has put the float plane on his web site. He even has the owners name, P.G. Taylor.
http://www.edcoatescollection.com/ac1/austu/VH-UIH.html

P.G Taylor was an extremely experienced Catalina pilot and had also made several similar pioneering flights. He won fame in 1935 as the crew member on Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith's flight in the Southern Cross when he transferred oil from one engine to another by climbing out of the cabin and balancing on the struts in mid-flight.

from the power house museum.

here's a link that tells the story of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and Captain P.G. Smith
http://www.airborne.org/flying/history.htm#smithy



deadants

[Laverdiere]

I downloaded Paint.net which has layering options but I don't understand it!  I want to remove the stains in this pictures how do I do that?  Thanks, Laverdiere

[deadants]

Hi Laverdiere,
           Do you have access to the original?  You will need to scan this photo at a much higher resolution to see the detail. at the mooment this photo is a bit hard to see skin tones and hair line.

           I downloaded paint.Net to see what tools it has available. It has Layes with a few blending modes. you will find them by clinking on the layer property button at the bottom of the Layers window.
 Layes are not my worry, It's the clone Stamp tool an the brush tool that are a bit rough compared with photoshop, but you got to use what you got.

           So lets try something simple.  After you have opend the photo, create a new layer. In the layer window click the new Layer button bottom left. Give this Layer a new name by either double clicking on the new Layer or clicking on the Layers property button, bottom rigt, name it clone1 or whatever you like as long as it's unique. Zoom in about 150% on his head to see a little better. Next we will look at the Clone Stamp Tool, just below the pencil tool. After you have it selected, change your brush width. The Brush With is resized at the top of the main window, to the right of the Fill Style. Make the brush size about 7 or 8 now have a look on your photo there is a couple of white spots above his head.  Move you mouse  just  off the white spots and  Ctl click the mouse. This will take a snapshot of the screen under your mouse pointer, now you can start to carefully brush over the white spots.

          If you can do a little bit of practice on the clone stamp tool, we can move on to the next step. I have to learn what Pain.Net can do. It's not full featured as Photoshop so we might have to find different ways of doing things.

          Thats enough for one day, let me know when your ready for the next step. Hopefully we will get some input from the other pixel pushers who watch this board.


deadants

[deadants]

You can see that by selecting the background with the lasso tool and adding a Gaussian Blur, it lifts this photo dramatically. I must admit I used the Lasso tool in Photoshop for this as the lasso tool in Paint.Net is only a click and drag operation and I can't figure out how to select exactly what I want.


deadats

[Tariana]

I'll have to check out those sites.
Here's some of my first cracks at colorization.
This is my Gran as a kid.
(Gran is my foster grandmother / cousin)