Tutorial on Photo Touchup?

gordonwd · Post by **gordonwd** » Fri Jan 19, 2007 9:04 pm

Are there any tutorials around for doing advanced work in PI12 such as photo restoration and touchup? I remember seeing one a while back for Photoshop (I think), and was impressed with the capabilities that were used.

The project that I want to work on is restoring pictures that were scanned from some old 2x2 glass slides (by old, I mean 100+ years old). They were scanned at 2400dpi, so I have some nice approx. 4000x4000 pixel TIFFs to start with.

An example is the picture below. Mainly what I'd like to do on this one is to take out the lines from the cracked glass. But I'd also like to see what else could be done with it. So if anyone can point me to a tutorial, book, etc. I'd appreciate it.

(The image here has obviously been reduced and JPEG'd, but you can get the idea)

MaryLouW · Post by **MaryLouW** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 9:38 am

It's really hard to write a tutorial for photo restoration since each and every photo is unique and has different needs. This one is in very good condition and shouldn't be hard to make it look really good. A little bit of cloning here and there, maybe some light blurring on the face spots, etc.

njdowding · Post by **njdowding** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 10:31 am

but if you are looking for tutorials on specific tools then by clicking on the link for the resource center at the bottom of MaryLou's post you will find a search engine to search the massive tuorial database held there. I am sure you will find one that helps.

Nick

trueblue · Post by **trueblue** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 3:28 pm

As MaryLou and Nick said it's nigh impossible to write a tutorial for photographic restoration.
I've been doing this for several years and had some really bad, old photographs to restore. It's tedious and takes a lot of patience and time.
You will have to work with the image blown up (zoom) so you can see the damaged pixels and repair them a few at a time.
In PI12 there's clone tools, and of course the paint brushes. Most have to be used sparingly.
Your picture is in very good condition for its age. It is better to have a worn look in an old photograph otherwise you'd take away it's authentic look.

gordonwd · Post by **gordonwd** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 3:57 pm

Actually, I did some googling and found a plug-in call AKVIS Photo Retoucher, available for a free trial download. It was amazing! Using mask mode, etc., I drew a selection area around part of the long crack toward the right side of the photo. Running the plug-in, it took quite a while to process, but when it was done the crack had been completely removed while preserving the underlying details of the photo. For example, where the crack crosses the hands of the seated woman, the crack was gone without removing the details of her fingers. It would have taken me a very long time to do this by hand with the cloning tool, and probably with worse results.

It's a bit of a pricey product, but if I can do most of my work within 10 days...

gordonwd · Post by **gordonwd** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 4:00 pm

trueblue wrote: Your picture is in very good condition for its age. It is better to have a worn look in an old photograph otherwise you'd take away it's authentic look.

You're right. As I mentioned, this was from a glass-encased slide transparency as opposed to a print, so it's still in good shape. I mainly want to get rid of the lines from the cracked glass, but will not try to "enhance" the picture in any major way. Thanks for your reply.