Hopeless?

[Skip R]

Greetings forum members, I am a new member but have been a dedicated reader of the PSE forums for some time. I have learned so much from the talented posters here. I am a true fan of many of the regular contributors.
I now have a problem I have not seen addressed. I came across a photo of my brother and me as kids that is over fifty years old. The quality in general is poor and some of the colors have bled. I scanned it with an Epson Perfection at 300 dpi. The problem is the picture when opened in PSE, is very grainy. I have tried the fragment and despeckle filters and using the smudge tool. The photo loses what little detail there is. Is there a process to correct the grainy condition?


Power Mac Dual 1.8 OSX version 10.4.4

[MikeH]

Hi, welcome to the Forums...:)

It's good that you have stopped lurking out there and joined the community here...

Can you post the picture? It will be easier for us to give you the best advice. Go to www.pixentral.com (http://www.pixentral.com), upload the photo, copy the url given to your picture and paste it here.

Mike

[Kathy]

Skip,

Welcome to the forum!

I would try scanning at 600 dpi and scanning in two directions and then merging the scans in Elements. Here is a former thread about restoration that talks about this technique. You could also try a Gaussian blur on any distracting background items to bring out the subjects more.

http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3290&highlight=Photo+Restoration

I have an Epson Perfection 2480. I have found that using the colour restoration feature really helps with faded photos. It is only available in Professional Mode.

Hope this helps.

Kathy

[Carbone]

Hello and welcome to the Forums, Skip R!

If all else fails, there's a very good plug-in which has salvaged more than one picture :

http://www.neatimage.com/mac/index.html

I have not tried it myself, but judging from the various people who have used it and posted comments later to report the success, I'd say it seems a pretty good tool!

Ray

[TonyW]

Welcome to the forum. One thing to check is whether its the original picture that was grainy or whether you introduced it in the scanning process. All pictures are grainy when you look close enough. So make sure you're viewing the original and scanned image at the same size before you blame the scanner. And, as Ray says, neat image is a very useful addition that I use often although, like anything else, it won't restore details that weren't there in the first place :)

Tony

[Skip R]

Thank you all for your great responses. All your help, makes this forum the best PSE resource there is. I am attaching the scanned photo as requested. I hope this assists in understanding my dilemma.

http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1bqHJouhJTsuK5q8Kaqo5g55QQq

Power Mac Dual 1.8 OSX version 10.4.4

[TonyW]

I don't think it's too hopeless although it will never be the original. I'm curious what size the original was. The image you posted is rather small and there wasn't enough of it for my neat image to sample. If it really was a very small print to start with it's going to get grainy if you try and enlarge it.

Tony

[Wendy]

Hi Skip ...

... and welcome to the forum :)

One of the problems with early colour photographs is that the colour degenerates ... lots of Kodak colour have this problem. I suspect that you are not goung to be able to go much with it ... if the photograph is precious to you then I would suggest the best way may be to convert a copy to grayscale and then recolour it ...

It will never be perfect bit I think it will be better than trying to sort out the original colour :)

Wendy

[Daviskw]

Hello Skip

I am not sure how much you expect to bring the picture back but with a little work you can make it better.

The posted picture is pretty low resolution so with the original you can do better.

I used levels and hue/sat to remove most of the colorcasts. Then I selectively used a clone lighten brush, a blur filter to even the picture out some.

Butch

http://img56.imageshack.us/img56/5511/1bqhjouhjtsuk5q8kaqo5g55qqq0jj.th.jpg (http://img56.imageshack.us/my.php?image=1bqhjouhjtsuk5q8kaqo5g55qqq0jj.jpg)

[Mary]

Hi Skip - I think it is important that we know the original size of the photo. Let us know and also let us know what size output you set your scanner for. That can make a huge difference in what you have to work with in PSE. :)

[Skip R]

I knew I could count on this group. The tips are great and I am in the process of trying them all out. Carbone, the Neat Image filter does a wonderful job and is in fact a very nice tool for PSE. Thank you for the resource. The original photo size is 4x6 The scanned size is 1024x668, scanned at 300 dpi. Once again, thank you everyone, you guys are the best.

Power Mac Dual 1.8 OSX version 10.4.4

[Mary]

Hi again Skip
How did the original look? 4 x 6 is a fairly modern print size - was it by any chance on a textured paper. I had some that I got better results when I set the scanner to descreen as if it were a magazine type print.:)

[ME100FINN]

Hello and welcome to the Forums, Skip R!

If all else fails, there's a very good plug-in which has salvaged more than one picture :

http://www.neatimage.com/mac/index.html

I have not tried it myself, but judging from the various people who have used it and posted comments later to report the success, I'd say it seems a pretty good tool!

Ray

I have used this program--the free version for Windows--to remove noise from higher ISO images and it's great! I just go through the simple automated steps (havent used it more than that) and the results are very pleasing. People warned me tho...careful not to make people look "plastic" looking. I think I will purchase the inexpensive full version.
B

[karen donnybrook]

Skip, I tried using the adjust lighting after I had set the preferences in the levels dialogue box as per Scott Kelby.

I have, I think attached the file. (first attempt at attaching a file :D )

[TonyW]

I have used this program--the free version for Windows--to remove noise from higher ISO images and it's great! I just go through the simple automated steps (havent used it more than that) and the results are very pleasing. People warned me tho...careful not to make people look "plastic" looking. I think I will purchase the inexpensive full version.
B

Definitely worth purchasing the full version with the PSE plug-in. It's so much easier when you can just use it from within Elements - and apply it to individual layers in an image - so you can use a layer mask to paint back the people detail to avoid that plastic face effect,

Tony

[Daviskw]

Tony

I select and copy the filtered picture into the orignal file... then use a mask... still works good that way even if you can only save to Jpeg from Neat Image direct... if i may ask how much is the plugin version now.

Butch

[ME100FINN]

Ya know, just a though...have you considered trying the image in black and white or sepia tones? Maybe the discoloration wouldnt be so bad then!

[TonyW]

Tony

I select and copy the filtered picture into the orignal file... then use a mask... still works good that way even if you can only save to Jpeg from Neat Image direct... if i may ask how much is the plugin version now.

Butch

I checked and the cheapest version with the plug-in in $49.90.

http://www.neatimage.com/purchase.html

I used the free stand-alone for a while but the plug-in is much easier to use - I particularly like the fact that you can use it on selections so you can easily use it with different strengths on different parts of the image.

Tony

[ME100FINN]

I used the free stand-alone for a while but the plug-in is much easier to use - I particularly like the fact that you can use it on selections so you can easily use it with different strengths on different parts of the image.
Tony

Does the plug-in lose any features vs the stand alone that you find valuable? I am trying to figure out if the extra $$ is really worth it. Thanks.
B