Restoring faded photos, failing miserably

[nickfan1]

Hi all,

I am trying to restore 3 old photos of my mums, one of her wedding, one of her honeymoon and one of her parents, my grandparents together. Trying to do it for xmas. However I am having a terrible time trying to do it and with the oldest photo of my grandparents in particular, it is so faded my grannys facial features are not really too visible. I will try and post links to them below so you can see what I mean.

What I (well she) really wanted was vibrant colours and sharp features again. I have been playing with my photoshop CS2 and elements, but quick/smart fixing it is rubbish, and short of completely colouring in (for want of a better expresseion) the whole photo pixel by pixel by hand I can't seem to find an easier solution.Anyone out there that can help? It's not like I don't know my way around photoshop, I did some courses on it at uni (photoshop 6 mind) but this really has me stumped, I can't get the colour balance right, the fade to be sharp without graininess, etc.


Hope someone has some advice, thanks

Gemma xxx

Sorry villagephotos is not cooperating at the mo, I'll try to add on pics when I can!

[Wendy]

Hi Gemma ...

... and welcome to the forum :)

Try using Pixentral ... thats what most of us here use. Here is the link:

http://www.pixentral.com/index.php

Its much easier to help if we can see the problem :)

Wendy

[nickfan1]

Ok thanks for that, here are (hopefully) the photos.


http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1NIaP2V3jLrQaxuRtWCfE1l9YGwON

http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1MYHk45SktXER7jx9JYvFTDbu8oUeo

http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=14U4AvjdyiMUXiH7Wr9Q348kp5I5t

The first one is the worst in my grannys face, the other two are funny shapes becasue my mum cut them to fit frames, where they have all sat on a windowsill fading for 25 years!

[nickfan1]

Also I should add I have had a little success with the one with the cheetah on, not as much as I would have liked though, more like less yellow but not vibrant colour restoration like I wanted

[Wendy]

Hi ...

Some of them look as thought they were taken in the 60's ... and sadly there was a problem with coloour photographs taken then. The colours deteriorate (even if they are not left in the sun) ... so I doubt that you will ever be able to get strong vibrant colours back, unless you recolour the images.

There is a tutorial in the Subscriber Area>Tutorials which shows you how to do that .. why not take a look at it :)

I'll have a look at your images and I'll come back to you ... :)

Wendy

[nickfan1]

Thanks, I am most interesting in restoring the facial features of the first photo above all colour restoration and as you can see it is pretty blank there!

[Wendy]

Hi ...

To be honest there really isn't a lot of detail left in there ... by swtiching to Photoshop and using the blue channel I was able to bring out some detail in the face ... but not a lot.

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/17zSzAJgpZmpNk1fgAvkcYAQ9WQG1_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=17zSzAJgpZmpNk1fgAvkcYAQ9WQG1)

Wendy

[Daviskw]

Hi there

I used Grants tools and mixed the green and blue channels together then copied them above the background layer. Changed the blendmode to Luminosity. Then applied a noise filter.

To darken the features of the face I used dodge and burn tools. Tried to adjust the colors a little.

Like Wendy says there is just not a lot of detail to work with. Almost any change in the original degrades it somewhat.

Butch

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1LEgpjDipQTU0Mj6xiH1x2R9GP5_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1LEgpjDipQTU0Mj6xiH1x2R9GP5)

[apasskey]

Gosh Wendy and Butch - you are quite a pair!! Between the 2 of you and your suggestions there doesn't seem to be anything that Elements cannot do. I am just amazed every day!! All I can say is wow! Andie

[Ritage]

http://www.pixentral.com

Butch, I stole your version for this and put it through Smart Sharpen. It looks perhaps a little bit like a cartoon, but it brings out the facial features, I think.

Rita

URL=http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1rZPdhn1cNkJ3cY9W93CK5p7LSv1][IMG]http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1rZPdhn1cNkJ3cY9W93CK5p7LSv1_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1rZPdhn1cNkJ3cY9W93CK5p7LSv1)

[Ritage]

I don't kow what happened to the link. But seems to work now.

Rita