Photographic Restoration
 

Hi Folks,

A while ago I was given a family photograph of a maternity ward in 1920something that had seen better days. I was, at that point dabbling with a friends Photoshop 6 so decided to have a go at restoring the print.

This is what I was given.

NEXT EPISODE: The restored Photo

Oh God, the suspense is killing me! What will it look like??

is that the only scan you have of it? the JPG artifacts are making this take far longer than it should.

If you could rescan it and set the JPG compression to 12 (large file), it will be far more preferable.

If I do that Ike, I won't be able to post it to the forum. There are limits to the size of image that can be posted here 100k and/or 1600x1600 pixels only.

I could post at a higher quality but the physical size would be smaller.

Chris.

yes, but then I could do a better job....
email it to me if you want... send me a PM and I'll give you my address.

http://www.gartsvault.com/Accounts/K.../photo_ret.jpg

The Restored Image
 

It's ok Ike, these posts are deliberatly small so the forum will accept them, the originals are much larger ... about 5megs. If you want to have a go then just e-mail me and I'll send you the original PSD file.

This was my first go at restoration, so I was glad it was a B/W image. You can do the impossible with black & white ... colour takes a little longer :D


Chris.

My second project was ...
 

this. A photo of my Father (Middle) and his two brothers, taken in Shepherds Bush, London 1927.

Cute Huh!

Chris.

I'm impressed. Do people make a living doing stuff like that? Seems like it'd be fun but only for a few hours a day. If I had a few hours a day (and had learned how to do it) I'd hang out my shingle.

Photo restoration? All de time!
 

Six years working at a museum gives a body a little insight into how to fix bad pictures, so when this 91 year old guy wanders into my print shop, he'd found a good place to have his photos spruced up. He gave me permission to keep a copy to show people, too. Nice old guy. (For the record, in the pic, he's in Nagasaki, Nov. 22, 1945. Jpeg'd for forum consumption.)

Nice restore ... you could also if you'd wanted, cropped down to the image only, then remounted it on layers to a clean white background 5mm larger all round to give the effect of a white bordered print again ... well ... that's what I'd have done anyway ;)


Chris.

Interesting that this guy spent some time in Nagasaki when it was hot and nobody knew much about radiation. Here he's still kicking at 91. I wonder if he's had any problems as a result of breathing the dust and drinking the water?