Hi everyone!
Si I won't go completely insane I am working on my own personal little project and would like to share some of it with you. Í am restoring a photo for someone I know, it is a picture of his grandparents taken in China a long time ago. I love the photo and all it portrays. Unfortunately the photo has the grossest honeycomb texture you have ever seen. It is a fairly small photo, 4x6" and the owner wants to enlarge it and send it to back to China. Anything bigger than the original size and you see white dots the likes of whom you never knew existed. I mean white dots panorama, it gives a total new meaning to the words "white dots".
I scanned the photo at a high resolution (1600dpi) and in color. I then flipped it upside down and scanned it again.
In Photoshop I straightened the upside down photo and pasted it as a layer on top of the first photo. I set the blending mode to difference and lined the two photos up to fit exactly together. Then I changed to blending mode back to normal and the opacity to 50%. I am quite pleased with the outcome, not only did the texture fade but also the shadows that deepened the other damage haven completely disappeared. This photo will now take me only a couple of hours to clean (I hope!) :P
Hannie
(http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/bb18/marijtje2/OPR/honeycomb.jpg)
(http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/bb18/marijtje2/OPR/honeycomb2.jpg)
Great job of eliminating the tonal change across the crease lines. And the white dots are greatly reduced too. :up:
I have two questions:
1. Since the texture is from the matte paper and of very regular pattern, would FFT filter work help?
2. When you blend the two layers together, is there a blending mode that would use the darker of the two for each pixel?
I've been having bad luck with my FFT filter. Actually it is the iFFT filter that will not do it for me. Photoshop registers that iFFT was applied but the picture just won't show and remains in FFT (with the black dots and star in the middle). I haven't been able to read anywhere what is going wrong here , maybe it is a bad plug in version. That is the reason I have been looking for alternative methods of dealing with texture glare.
Hannie
Hi Hannie!
I couldn't get the FFT filter to work either until I found Ro's tutorial here http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=185 (http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=185). It's so simple even I can do it.
MJ
Hi MJ,
Thanks a lot for the link, I will try that out right away!
Hannie
Hi Hannie
I love the effect of your technique. I tried a similar route with my little girl last night, but the results weren't nearly that good. I think it may be the difference between a photo with texture (a regular pattern) vs. one with ungodly grain and many huge dark splotches. I still appreciate the logic, so I may try it again tonight with a few other blending modes and see what I get. If I can't get her looking decent soon, you may all be treated to an "MJ rant" from me!
The photo on which you're working is lovely. What a wonderful legacy.
Cheers!
Glenna
Yes Glenna, the texture on the photo must be regular for the FFT filter to work that properly so I am told. I still haven't got the darn iFFT filter to work for me. Even after taking Ro's tut (thanks again MJ).
For irregular grain and specks it is probably not a bad idea to use several different strengths Dust & Scratches layers with layer masks and you those to paint away the grain and splotches.
:-*
Hannie
Edit: finally got my FFT filter to work. Turned out I didn't have RGB version installed so went and dowloaded the right one! Back to the drawing table... :)
Hi y'all!
I just finished my China project, thought it would be nice to tell you what I did.
Like I said earlier I scanned the photo twice, the second time turned it 180 degrees. That got rid of a lot of texture but I like even better what it did to all the scratches and folds.
I also ran the photo through the FFT filter, I had to lower the resolution from 1600 to 600. (FFT doesn't like to iFFT 80 Mb images!) That got rid of even more of the honeycomb texture. I did not add the FFT layer to the original photo, instead I used the FFT image (black/white) to work on further, added a level adjustment layer and used hue/saturation to give it back that sepia color.
Worked on the damage and blurred out any leftover honeycomb patterns.
I really enjoyed working on this photo! :)
Hannie
(http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/bb18/marijtje2/OPR/ChinaProject.jpg)
WOW!!!!!!! That's amazing Hannie.... :up:
Hannie,
What a beautiful job you did with this one!
Margie
Hi Hannie
My compliments on a beautiful restoration – and some interesting methods to scan it and clean it. You're awesome!
Glenna
Oh Hannie you did a fabulous! job. Amazing!
Cheers,
MJ
What an amazing restoration!!! :up:
It is nteresting to see her pull her left sleeve up to show the jade bracelet.
:up: Beautiful job Hannie. It has such a surreal feeling to it.
:up: :up: :up: So pretty!
Thats one nice clean up job.
Just one question, if you don't mind. I've seen the term "FFT filter" a couple of times, could you please enlighten me on this. If not here could you PM me about it, thank you.
Ray..
Hannie,
Beautiful work. :wnw:
Johnboy
Aaaw you guys, thanks so much, you shouldn't have.... :halo: (but I'm mighty glad you did!) >:D
Ray, FFT filter basically it is a pattern removal filter used in many disciplines like sound, forensics, imaging etc., if you want to read about it some more:
http://student.kuleuven.be/~m0216922/CG/fourier.html
Don't be put off by all the mathematical formulas, it is an interesting article!
Candy already posted this link, for the sake of completeness I will post it again:
http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=185
Nice detail about the jade bracelet Chen!
:loveit:
Hannie
Hannie, seeing what you have accomplished getting rid of the pattern on the picture, make me want to try it on a few that I have that are on canvas. Thanks to both you and Candy for posting the link about the free download. The only part that I am not certain about is on downloading the WinRar. When you go to that link; it list it as WinRARS.71 and as a "Trial." By trial does that mean after a certain amount of days you either purchase it or you loose the use of it?
Margie
Hi Margie!
Hi Margie!
Go ahead and install the trial version of Winrar. All that will happen after 30 days is that after opening theWinrar you'll get a pop up window informing you how to purchase the program.( and thus get rid of the pop up window every time you use the program). you cantill use the program!
Hannie
edit: sorry about the double post, is there any way of removing it? :-[
Hannie & Candy, Thanks for that info. :up2:
It looks very interesting, I like the end result of it.
Now I just have to learn how to use it.
My family finally found out that I do photo restoration. I got a stack yesterday and some of them have texture paper. I am trying to follow your procedure but am having difficulty aligning the flipped upside-down picture with the right-side-up one. Any trick you may share? My problem is that I can not see well without zooming in but then I lost the handle to transform the picture.
Hi Chen,
There is no chance you will be getting bored soon then, I hope for you that not too may of them are textured!
5 copies of my China restorations went to China the other day, this portrait was the only picture there was of the grandparents. The family tree can now be completed The prints turned out great!
Now for the lining up of the the 2 layers, you will have to use the '"difference" blending mode, zoom in as much as you can and you will find that the 2 layers lock together quite easily. If you're not sure that they match perfectly just turn the eye on and off quickly (after changing the blending mode back to '"normal"at 50% opacity).
That should do the trick.
Hannie
schen, get your versions of the image right side up. Layer one on top of the other. Put top layer in difference blend mode. Use the move tool on top layer till image goes black. They will be registered.
http://upload.pbase.com/image/87634824 (http://upload.pbase.com/image/87634824)
(http://i.pbase.com/g3/93/579993/2/87634824.NXgypduJ.jpg)
I knew there is a better way than what I was doing. I almost got crossed eyes working on alignment.
Thanks Kiska for the pictorial explanation.
Hannie, the family in China will be very happy. That grandparents picture looks about 100 years old and you were able to restore it to such a nice shape.
Besides the texture paper, all these family pictures of mine are very easy with light fading, discoloration, scratches and small rip, nothing major. I banned my family from printing photos on texture paper :) but my daughter revolted because she does not like visible finger prints people put on the photos. :mad:
Chen, one little warning, when you line up your photos through difference blending mode it is possible that you will not get a totally black image. I think this has to do with the fact that the images in Kiska's (great!) tutorial were identical images. Those will line up to perfectly black image. We are working with 2 images that are actually different from each other because of the light angle (180 deg.). Most of the lined up image should be black but for instance the cracks and texture spots will remain somewhat lighter.
Hannie
Thanks for the warning. We want to merge them because they are different.
Hannie, that's right. Especially if the image is not perfectly square,when you turn it to scan again, it will b a little off (won't go completely black). The transform tool might help to adjust the upper layer.
A really beautiful job Hannie, I can see why it was so much fun for you yo work on, it's such a lovely image. :up: