"Non-Restore" Challenge 2

[Bambi]

Since there was so much interest in our first Challenge, we decided to give you another one.

As before, you can post your work here in this topic.  It would be great if you can also add a small description of what you did to get your result.  Of course you can add comments to other posts, ask questions, joke around a bit, etc.

Here it is:

[Mhayes]

Thanks Bambi!

Before you all die of fright on this one, take a look at the little girl in the Channels and see which one gives you the best information.

Margie

[bjtx]

Bambi,
There will likely be a lot of participants restoring this cute little person.
Thanks !

[Mhayes]

And a lot of volunteers needing therapy afterwards.  ::)

The Duck

[Methok]

Hi,

Where or how do we download the full-res version of this to have a crack at?

Thanks.

- Steve

[Jonas.Wendorf]

Hi Steve,

you can just click on the image and download the full res image from this :).

[Methok]

Thank you Jonas.

I thought there would of been one with higher res the 72ppi which we could use

But I shall use the one supplied. thanks again.

- Steve

[Mhayes]

Steve, even though this is at 72 dpi the dimensions are larger than the original of 3.25 x 3.75 which means you can take your crop tool and set it to that at 300 dpi. You can't do that on a low resolution if the dimensions are smaller.

Would you guys like to have a gallery with challenge photos in Photo Shelter and you make your comments like your have before and we download to you?

Margie

[Bambi]

Putting them in a gallery is a good idea, as long as everyone post on Forum.

Bambi

[G3User]

I have never had success with a major restoration from the blue chan or seriously tried the frequency separation action. The frequency separation action produces three layers, the bottom on is blurred (low frequency) in this case by 10 pixels. The middle layer is called colour, in this case it can be ignored. The top layer contains all the detail (high frequency), much of it noise.

So here goes, in each of the following the blurred and detail layers were visible so you could see the merged result even though I was only working on the detailed layer

EDIT Forgot to mention that Jonas has done a tutorial on frequency separation so he may have better suggestions

The Blue Chan as per Margies suggestion


I used Noiseware to reduce a large part of it.


On a roll, I then used Polaroid Dust and Scratches to tidy up the black dots


Next step will be to apply a mask so details of her eyes, mouth etc will be back to original and their sharpest and tidy up the rest of her face.

Athol

[Jonas.Wendorf]

Good idea about the Frequency Separation, Athol  :up:

I used it a bit differently, but there are lots of ways to use it and the result is what really matters with this.
First I used the blue channel to get rid of some of the blotches, then I set up a frequency separation where I only separated the low and high frequencies and not the color (seemed useless to me as I was only working with a black & white image anyways).
For the separation I used a radius on which I felt comfortable actually painting with this level of detail (6px in this case, but when in doubt rather use a higher radius!). I then created a blank layer between the low and high frequency layers and used a soft brush with very low opacity to clean up the low frequencies. For this I temporarily turned off the high frequency layer:

Next I duplicated the high frequency layer and used a clipping group to clip it to the original and set the duplicate's mode to "Normal". Then I ran "Filter"-"Noise"-"Dust & Scratches" on it with a radius of 4 and a threshold of 10, which eliminated much of the underlying noise and kept the texture mostly intact. Since the outlines of the patches that the filter created seemed to harsh to me, I also ran the "Filter"-"Blur"-"Gaussian Blur" on it with a radius of 0.3 px:

Since this also blurred some of the details, I created a layer mask for this layer and masked the parts where I wanted the details to stay:


Of course this workflow still requires most of the texture to be cleaned up, but since the underlying luminosity values are now in better shape, cloning and healing should be a lot easier, especially when done on the high frequency layer :).

PS: A word of warning: Frequency separation is one of those techniques that can come in really handy if you know how to use them, but it can also mess your pictures up and be more trouble than benefit, so if you're new to this it's best to practice a little first to get the hang of it.

[bjtx]

Athol & Jonas,
Thanks for explaining how you use frequency separation.  The images showing the steps are most helpful.  :up2: :up2:

I've tried a different/generic version of the technique on other images & wasn't happy with the results.  However, I didin't include additional noise reduction or painting in the process. ---  Great ideas!


Athol - I'm using CS6 PS -XP & was thinking of downloading & using Polaroid D&S as a PS filter.  Since the plugin is from 2002, are you aware of any complications which might arise?
http://web.archive.org/web/20080821225815/http://www.Polaroid.com/service/software/poladsr/poladsr.html

-- -hope to find time to work on this restore in a few days.

[G3User]

Thanks for the description Jonas, most informative.  :wnw:

As you mention, it is a fairly technical method to use and your experience certainly shows.

Rather than go through the steps to create the separation manually I have used the action created by Flora on RetouchPRO. Next time I will spend more time to select the blur value and on manual repairs on the separated layers.

Bambi, perhaps the way to go with this challenge is to use Jonas's final image as a start for colorization unless someone has another approach.

Betty, I am using CS3 and the Polaroid filter installs as just one of the filters. Can't see that it would be any different in CS6. No instructions with it so you just need to play to understand what it will and won't do.

Athol

[drstong]

This is beautiful and the results are absolutely stunning!
I use the frequency separation technique and see it as a way to sharpen detail. Is it okay to sharpen in this way? Is the instruction against sharpening of any kind aimed specifically at sharpening filters?

[Jonas.Wendorf]

I was asked via email if I could share my frequency separation actions, but since I didn't want to hijack this thread, I created a new thread here: http://www.operationphotorescue.org/forum/index.php/topic,4053.msg35840.html#msg35840