Advice on smoothing an image please

[Dave]

I have been working on this image for a while now, I have cut a section out so you can see.. the entire image is like this basically and I dont have anywhere clean to sample for healing brush or patch tool. I am at a loss as to how I can clean this image up without losing the detail.

Thx in advance (im using cs2)

[capriccio]

Check out http://www.neatimage.com - their software is an excellent companion to Photoshop. It's inexpensive (around $30), but even the downloadable trial version produces usable .jpg files.

The outputted file will be the name plus "_filtered" added. Then you can import the Neat Image file into your .psd and mask out any detail that was lost, but keep the smooth areas.

I hope that made some sense. There are other noise/artifact removing programs out there, but Neat Image is the best bet for the money, I think.

[Dave]

Check out http://www.neatimage.com - their software is an excellent companion to Photoshop. It's inexpensive (around $30), but even the downloadable trial version produces usable .jpg files.

The outputted file will be the name plus "_filtered" added. Then you can import the Neat Image file into your .psd and mask out any detail that was lost, but keep the smooth areas.

I hope that made some sense. There are other noise/artifact removing programs out there, but Neat Image is the best bet for the money, I think.

Thanks I will give it a look  ... it looks like a combination of mud and water damage and maybe the fact of it being an older picture. I just didnt know what I could do to make it clear, but with any luck this plugin will help

[Dave]

that did clear it up but by making it blue... maybe im out of my league here or im just expecting too much from the image 

[Mark Wilson]

Dave, I ran a simple Dust & Scratches with Radius of 9 and Threshold 11. And while it didn't remove the noise completely, it did give a much smoother place to start from

-Mark.

[Dave]

Here is the original picture just so you can get an idea:

[Dave]

and this is the same image with Dust & Scratches with Radius of 9 and Threshold 11applied aswell as a desaturate.

I may add that its hard to see how bad it is from this size picture, I think I may have another blast tomorrow and if I cant figure out how to do it I will send it back to mike.

[Mark Wilson]

Whatever you do, Dave, you are going to have to do on selected areas. Anything that will remove those blotches will also remove detail, so you can't apply it to the entire image. You will probably have to select a small areas and work on them, then move on. Each small area you fix will give you more places to sample from. Leave the details (hat, face, medals, etc.) until last.

-Mark.

[Dave]

Whatever you do, Dave, you are going to have to do on selected areas. Anything that will remove those blotches will also remove detail, so you can't apply it to the entire image. You will probably have to select a small areas and work on them, then move on. Each small area you fix will give you more places to sample from. Leave the details (hat, face, medals, etc.) until last.

-Mark.

Thanks for your help Mark, I appreciate your experianced eyes hehe. I have had a go doing what you have said and I think its looking a little better. I have one question though, how would I keep the folds in his jacket present? I have tried burning a little but that makes it stand out too much - I may try sharpening too but I thought if I asked here someone may have a good method.

[Mark Wilson]

You're definately going in the right direction with this, Dave.

Regarding the folds. You could try using the same method (cloning or healing) with the tool set to Darken. That will leave the dark areas as they are and only darken the lighter noise.

Don't sharpen until you reach the end of the restoration!

-Mark.

[Ziaphra]

No...don't sharpen at all...this comes from Becky. See this thread:

http://www.oprworkshop.org/forum/index.php?topic=115.0

[Mark Wilson]

Thanks Ziaphra, I think Becky's post came after mine.

-Mark.

[Ziaphra]

No problemo...just felt I had to point it out.

[vhansen]

Regarding dodging and burning:  I find the dodge and burn tools a bit hard to handle, so I add a layer filled with gray over the image. I set the layer mode to Soft Light, and set the layer opacity to 50%.  You can now use white paint to paint where you would dodge, and black paint where you would burn.
Regarding noise:  I usually make all the corrections first, then duplicate the layer and use Neat Image.  Duplicating the layer will allow you to add a layer mask so you can be more selective about where, and how much smoothing is applied to the image.

[Peter_AUS]

As a matter of interest, why No Sharpening At All.