Avoiding Distortion

[wlmpilot]

My girlfriend took a picture of a picture of her grandmother. I have no clue what the photo settings on her phone were. That said, I would not know what the best settings to take the picture with would be either. I also do not know the size of the original.

She wants me to try and make it match two other pictures in looks and size. I believe I can handle the looks. However, the size is 15x21 and she wants in a oval frame. I have attached a picture, which is an original, that she already has so that you can see it. This picture is 15x21.

I have asked her to locate the original so that I can scan into the computer. I am wondering if it is even worth trying to take a picture of a picture and place it on a 15x21 layer.

Thoughts?

[Jean-Luc]

Can your printer print at 15x21?

[wlmpilot]

No, it cannot. But I was hoping to find one that did, maybe at a place that makes banners or maybe an office store.

[Jean-Luc]

You may create a 15x21 image at 300 DPI in PSP and put the other images inside. I suggest you cut the oval manually from the final printed paper and not create the oval inside PSP.

The difficulty will be to create the digital version from the images. You need to extract the images from their oval frame because of the reflections.
A scanner has a limited size. If you scan in many parts, there is some work to assemble them all.
If you use a digital camera (never a smartphone), you will have to do it without flash and outdoor.

[wlmpilot]

Thank you for your suggestion.

[Andy2011]

If it is not possible to extract the picture from the frame (e.g. avoid damage), managed distortion can be used to minimise reflections.
A couple of years ago I had to take a series of pictures of artwork behind glass. I found the best way was to take the photos from an angle that avoided obvious reflections and then use PSP's perspective correction tool to remove the distortion.
For the perspective tool to work effectively, it helps to have something rectangular in the surrounds of the image.
For example, you could lay the picture on a flat surface and put a retangular sheet of paper behind it. Alternatively, lay out a rectangle with masking tape. What is important is to have straight lines and right-angled corners to act as a reference. Take the shot from the side but have the light coming from an angle that does not reflect into the camera lens. Obviously the target picture will be distorted but, in PSP, use the perspective correction tool, dragging the handles to the corners of the paper background/masking tape. Click to accept and the distortion of the target image should have been corrected. Then crop or paint out the unwanted reference rectangle.
Hope you find a suitable method.