Current WIP

[hoodman3]

Please comment on this wip.





Thanks in advance,
Pete

[lurch]

Pete, your highlights have gone bright yellow and your shadows have gone purple. The original probably has some silvering (tarnish). You might have better luck converting to black and white and restoring the aged color with a gradient map. Here's a quick-and-dirty showing that approach.



and here are the layers involved:



The second layer is a masked adjustment for the silvering.

Great job getting rid of the spots, by the way!

[hoodman3]

Lurch,

How does this look? I used a channel mixer layer to adjust the colors.



Thanks for the input.
Pete

[Mhayes]

Pete,

This is really looking good. When I downloaded it to look at it closer, I see see more of the color and not sure if you want some of the red that is there. If you go to black and white. the girl's dress is pretty bright. I like the idea of what Lurch has done by going black and white and then doing a gradient map to give it an aged look, and it also adds more contrast. One very minor pic and that would be to even out the shading on the clothers. Big improvement over the original.

Margie

[hoodman3]

Hey Lurch & Margie,

I don't understand what converting to black & white means exactly. Is that greyscale mode or should I desaturate? If I convert to greyscale I will loose all my layers.
Also, Lurch I'm not sure what the layers in your example are. Masked adjustment? Lighten tarnish? Black & white 1? Adjust tone? Also how can I convert to "black & white" and restore color.

Thanks for the input,
Pete

[Mhayes]

Pete, You can have a black & white without going out of rgb mode. Go down to your adjustment layers and click on Channel Mixer and click on monochrome. You can adjust the tonal range by moving the red, green, and blue channels. If you look in your channels you will see that all your channels look the same, but you can at any time adjust the sliders in the color mode or leave as is if you like what you see. I either do black & white by a Channel Mixer or sometimes converting to LAB's Lightness Channel. I may save from LAB to Grayscale but  then go back to rgb. I never do a change to a black & white by going straight to grayscale. Also, I do not do a desaturation to get black & white. Hope that makes sense.

I feel guilty saying to change to black & white since I was way off base on your last restore.  :-[ On that one, I think it was a black & white that was hand painted. On this one, I think any color showing is damage.

Margie

[hoodman3]

Margie,

Thanks for responding. After Lurch made the comment about the yellows and purples I did a channel mixer adjustment layer as Katrin Eisman suggests. Everything that I have read says greyscale is never the best result when converting from color to black and white. I went back in and checked the settings and they were high (100 total for all the colors). I adjusted the red slider down and hopefully that does the trick. Let me know.



Now I will go in and smooth the shading.

Thanks again,
Pete

[lurch]

Pete, Image>Adjustments>Channel Mixer (with the monochrome box checked) or Image>Adjustments> Black and White are both fine ways to convert to grayscale, which is just another word for a  black and white image. The latter has more flexibility, but flexibility can be a mixed blessing! You are right to avoid Image>Adjustments>Desaturate. Grayscale in itself is not a bad thing - it's how you get there that matters. Your restore still runs from yellow to purple, btw, though way less saturated and much better looking.

And I'm not ignoring your questions from a couple of posts ago - just figuring out the best way to answer them. Stay tuned. :)

[Hannie]

Hi Pete,

What a great job and what an interesting topic. 
It may be my monitor (I'm using a non calibrated small monitor now) but the whites in the photo still seem yellow.  You could lower the saturation in the yellows just a little if you want to get rid of it.

:up2:

Hannie

[hoodman3]

Hannie,

Thanks for the input. I wasn't sure that all of the color should be eliminated. How does this look?



Thanks again,
Pete

[lurch]

MUCH better, though the yellow still shows. Remember that, in the beginning, these old photos were black and white (or grayscale, if you will), therefore completely without color.

[Hannie]

It looks great Pete!  I agree with you that you don't have to take away all the color. 
(it probably was a black and white photo originally but most people appreciate/like the sepia tone that is almost always present on older photos)

Hannie

[kiska]

I notice you have cs3. It has a black and white adjustment layer.