Yesterday my dad gave me a photo of my grandfather and him at age 5 making homemade ice cream. The photo is from 1938 and is in poor condition. He would very much like to have it cleaned up so he could have a copy for the Ice Cream Social at their church. I really think he'd just like a nicer copy of him and his father together -- but he'd never say that. I seem to be making a bigger mess of the photo than I am cleaning it up. Making homemade ice cream is very important in our family so I know this is an important photo to him. Any help, hints. etc would be greatly appreciated. Thanks - Debi
First off, work on separate layers so you can edit non-destructively. You typically need to use the clone, blur, dodge and burn tools to reconstruct old photos.
Work on very small areas at high magnification, but zoom out frequently to 100% to check that there isn't some larger artifact you don't see up-close.
Use Curves (or Levels) after doing any cloning or other reconstruction.
Consider making it a duotone, perhaps (considering the topic) a light blue to give it a "cool" tone.
Don't try to make it perfect. Do the stuff you can do, and make a print. Later, you can come back and work on it some more. My "best" photo editing/reconstruction project went through about eighteen drafts ... :-)
Do you have photoshop ??? I'd use the dust & scratches filter under Noise.. There's a great tutorial on how to use it using layer masks in the photoshop wow book.. Of which I have but of course can't find.. That seriously takes away all the little scratches you see.. It's a start.. I'll continue to look for it, but in the mean time if anyone knows how to do that, please post.. It's easy, I just can't remember the steps right now..
Here's my 4 second job.. I cleaned it up a little.. its an old picture.. got to leave some old marks on it.. attempted to provide some faint definition to the portions blown out (outlines on granddads white shirt, etc)and changed the overall hue..
Thank you for all of your help with this! You are doing a much better job at it than I did. I lost too much of the detail in my attempts. After reading over GeneralE's tips I can see where I was making mistakes. My dad will be very pleased to have a nicer version of this family heirloom.
I took a crack at it. Main thing was trying to drag some contrast out of it. I threw Lucis at it and messed with the settings til it looked as good as I could get it. Then a bunch of cloning & healing to get some of the scratches out. I read GeneralE's suggestion and spit out a blue version along with BW and a sepia.
Turns out mine's pretty close to Art's BW version (subtle differences - note that we BOTH thought to give you an ear!).
Ofcourse, my Godzilla is just lurking in the dark ;O)
:-) Thanks for the ear! It's my dad that was missing it not me. This is the other photo he gave me to "fix." It had much better quality to work with than the other.
That darling little girl with the braids was me at age 5 or 6.
Art - thanks for the Godzilla version! I love it. I think I'll send that to him and tell him Godzilla was found lurking in the barn once the photo was cleaned up. I alway thought that old barn was creepy.
Thanks again everyone.
Debi
