How Much Blur

[philbach]

This Photo is somewhat daunting for me to restore.   It has a screen on it like newspaper print but it seems to be more extreme. 



So I converted the photo to a black and white rendition and blurred it primarily with Photoshops Smart Blur.  Here is the result.



I was wondering whether to quit or try another approach.

Thanks

[Hannie]

The blur looks good Phil! I wouldn't add any more.
I like the original background better than the new one, after clean up it won't look like new but it it goes well with the subject, no?

Hannie

[philbach]

Thanks Hannie.  I like your clean up of the portrait as well.  What did you use to remove the half tone?   I will use the original background.  Thanks.

[Hannie]

Phil, I lied!   :halo:
I actually did a little more blurring but left out the eyes, nose and mouth edges.
Did an FFT first, that partly took care of some of the print.

Hannie

[Shadow]

Hi Phil. Nice to see you. Wow, you picked a toughie. Your WIP is looking good. With Hannie's tip you will put it over the top for sure. Look forward to seeing your next shot. Good luck!

[philbach]

Well I use a Mac and I did not have access to the FFT filter.  Image J does have one that a mac can use but its needs to have a legacy Java SE 6 Runtime installed whatever that is.  I decided that was a tad risky to mess around with.  I will give it another Go and post it in a day or two. 

Thanks again, Hannie and Shadow.

[Shadow]

Hi Phil, not sure what version of PS you use. Have you checked out this version of FFT for Mac?  Fingers crossed it helps with your restore.
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/software/38969-developing-mac-photoshop-64-bit-fft-ifft-plugins.html

[Lynnya]

Hi Phil.. yes toughie for sure.. with a few corrections you'll take it home  :up:

[philbach]

Shadow that version is not available for the Mac any more.  What is still available is Image J.  At any rate I did download the legacy version of Java so I could open Image J and was able to run the filter.  Image J is available at the following link:

https://imagej.nih.gov/ij/download.html

The before and after versions of using the filter are below.  It nicely removed the halftone.   Here is the example



After using the FFT filter I cleaned up the image and used the original background has suggested by Hannie

[Shadow]

Sorry about that Phil. Had hoped it was a good link.  Thanks for the Image J link ... will pass it on to a Mac using buddy.
Thanks for sharing the before/after images of the FFT. That is so cool when it works. Your cleanup is looking good!

[Hannie]

Thanks for the link Phil, what a great result!

:up2:

Hannie

[Lynnya]

Looking good Phil  :up:

[philbach]

Well I tried several flavors of Blur, but using the healing brush seemed to give the best results.

[Mhayes]

Wow Phil, she looks great!

Margie

[philbach]

Thank you Margie