Question

Restoring/Cleaning an old Black and White photo

Asked by: symde

I have an old Black and White Photo that has some white "snow" over it and is a little blurry.
I'm a total newbie to CS3 and will appreciate tips to quickly touch it up. Does not have to be a pro job, just a small cleanup will help.
Attaching a reduced resolution image to explain what I mean.
Thanks

  • Copy-of-photo.jpg
    • 704 KB

    Reduced resolution of original pic - need to remove snow and sharpen this image

    Reduced resolution of original pic - need to remove snow and sharpen this image

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Asked On
2008-07-25 at 11:36:59ID23596408
Tags

Adobe

,

Photoshop

,

CS3

Topics

Image Correction Software

,

Adobe Photoshop

Participating Experts
2
Points
125
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: supernova54Posted on 2008-07-25 at 11:58:39ID: 22091332

Run the despeckle filter a few times...the rest of the random spots can be removed with the patch tool.  just circle the spot and drag it to a clean area of the photograph.

Theres a few filters you may want to play with....reduce noise and such.

 

by: symdePosted on 2008-07-25 at 12:44:46ID: 22091690

Thanks, am gonna try this and revert

 

by: D_BruggePosted on 2008-07-25 at 15:20:56ID: 22092709

There are very large books devoted just to old photo restoration in Photoshop, so for 125 points, you will only pick up a few pointers here

First - ALWAYS work on a copy, never your original.
Second - know that the despeckle filter will also make your blur problem worse.

The solution is to use the despekle filter, then use the history brush to paint back the areas such as the features of the face and hands, edges of the uniform, etc. that you want to remain sharp.

You will not get good results with the unsharpen mask, or even the smart sharpen filter because of all of the noise in the picture. (Sharpening tools make the noise much more pronounced.)

There are a number of different techniques that pros use to sharpen photos. Here is an overview of the "Find Edges" Mask technique that I think is most appropriate for this photo.
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/sharpening-photoshop-cs2

While I'm at it, here is an excellent video by Russell Brown that gives you an understanding of how the sharpening filters work and how you can control them more.
http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/AdvancedSharpening.mov



 

by: symdePosted on 2008-07-28 at 07:30:58ID: 22103483

No matter what I did, it made te picture look worse than the original. Guess it is in too bad a shape for reworking.
Finally, I just increased the contrast and left it at that . At least it reduced the washed-out effect.

To the administrator,
Please close this question.
Thanks to all who responded.

 

by: D_BruggePosted on 2008-07-28 at 16:10:40ID: 22107503

Actually, quite a bit can be done with this photo to make it look better but it's not without a good bit of effort. That's part of the reason that image retouchers make good money.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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