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How do we fix these cracks?

Started by Bambi, September 18, 2017, 03:38:57 PM

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Bambi

Many of the ClaghornL pictures that I just put in my gallery have this pattern of cracks on the surface. Does anyone know a good technique for getting rid of them?



Lynnya

#1
hmmm... I thought I'd try FFT filter... seems to have disappeared off my list of filters...It might work..I'll try it as soon as I can find it... >:(

Found it.. no it doesn't work.. nothing to star on.. :(

I'm going to try frequency separation... who knows.. it's a long shot...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldhG9fmgC7o

Nope... that does'nt work either... was hoping to do Frequency separation in reverse...  ish.....Will wait for a wizard to come along with the answer  ^-^
never giving up......learning from others as I go...

Lynnya

do you think with a lot of work this might end up being something?  I did "blend If"  - just messed with a lower layer of blur under the cracked layer.. then totally mashed all the pixels using the smooth tool (not good I'm sure) .. just a quick five min try.. anything there do you think? Lot of the detail is gone of course.. which is not good either..I'm so looking forward to other's ideas on this one..

never giving up......learning from others as I go...

Hannie

Bambi, are you in charge of the mucker-upper machine now? 

Lynn, that works quite well.  A similar result you can get by using Filters->Noise->Median, 6 pixels.

I think I would work on their faces on pixel level and use Content aware Heal/Clone to repair them.
After that the Median filter on the other areas or even a Dust & Scratches filter at 6 pixels and 13 levels.
Hannie Scheltema
Distribution Coordinator
[email protected]

Bambi


Mike Morrell

#5
I had a play around the photo and didn't get far either with filters, frequency separation or creating a mask for the cracks and painting/filling.  I guessed you'd need a mix between blurred layers, masks, cloned 'clean' areas and patching.

I did find something interesting on RetouchPro.com: http://www.retouchpro.com/tutorials/decrack/index.html. It's a free Photoshop action that creates layers to reduce cracks. I tried it out on the photo (just using the recommended values) and this is the result. It still needs a lot of cleaning and color correction but maybe easier to blur than the original. Maybe tweaking the default values would give better results.



Musician, Photographer and Volunteer

Lynnya

Hey Mike.. that looks pretty good.. just got to get rid of the dirt.. I'll have to check out that action.. thanks  :up:
never giving up......learning from others as I go...

mentalaustrian

Hi im a New volunteer. Habe to try it, but why nut usw the find edges filter to create a nice mask oft the cracks. Select the maskmand usw  dust and scratch remove vor contenaware Film in it. Sorry im not a native english speaker, hope this i clear ;)
Mario

Shadow

Hi Mario. Would like to try your suggestion. This can be a fun place to practice your English.
After dust and scratch, remove with content aware fill?
Which PS version are you using? Thanks for the tip.

Hannie

Hi Mario,

You never have to apologize for not being a native English speaker.  I was told by a very wise volunteer once when I apologized here for the same thing, years ago.

Your method sounds interesting, did you try it on this photo here?  I would love to see you post more on it with some photos perhaps?

Hannie
Hannie Scheltema
Distribution Coordinator
[email protected]

mentalaustrian

it was late as i wrote this ;) i will try it and show it here. i think it should work. my english isnt as abd as it was in my first message ;) there are just a lot of typos. wrote it with one thunb on my cellphone ;)

mentalaustrian

#11



all i could do at first try. its improvising with the technik from above and some noise plugins. its just a reduction, but otherwise it would be too much blurr. for less blurr there isnt enough imageinformation in the very small crackless parts i fear. what do you say ?

Hannie

I agree Mario, it will be hard to not lose detail if you want to completely get rid of the cracks.
Still think the best way to go is use any of the method in this topic on the background/water and repair the faces on pixel level?

Hannie
Hannie Scheltema
Distribution Coordinator
[email protected]

mentalaustrian

i didnt really lose detail ;) there is just nor more

melker

#14
Very interesting and challenging damage. I found a good way to delete the cracks.

1. Duplicate the image until you got three layers of it.
2. On one layer in Photoshop choose "Select < Color Range"; select the colors of the cracks, choose invert and then delete with the eraser the cracks. Do it a couple of times, playing around with the "tolerance" setting and choosing different colors of the cracks. Should remove the majority.
3. Second layer put a good amount of gaussian blur on it, so that the cracks aren't visible anymore.
4. The layer with the deleted cracks should be above the gaussian blur layer, now set the deleted-cracks-layer on divide (as blending mode). It should look something like this now:



5. With that layer visible go on select < color range again and choose the white and invert the selection again without erasing.
6. Now with the selection on, change to the third copy you made of the image and erase what was selected.
7. Make the layer you set on divide invisible. The gaussian-blur-layer fills in the cracks that have been deleted.



Comparison of just using color range to delete cracks vs. additionally using the set layer on divide method (red layer underneath for showing purposes)



From there on I'm not sure what to do. I tried to finetune everything a bit more, playing around with masks to save details, applying more blur and more sharpening, using the good old "Spot Healing Brush Tool" and drawing in some parts. It is really hard to not loose any of the sharp details of the face. The edited photo looks better scaled down, less blurry.