Photo Restoration Blog

Posts Tagged ‘difficult photo restoration’

Below I have included a couple of examples that illustrate what many of my previous posts have talked about. Many of these techniques described have been used in these two restorations

In the first example which I have called “motorbike mess” a large chunk of the image is missing and it has very large tears and creases and cracks. Most of the superficial cracks could be patched away sampling from suitable nearby areas or textures that matched the missing details. The largest crack through the middle needed a little more attention. This is where the sliding block puzzle technique, of cutting pieces using the correct selection technique and pasting and repositioning, slowly piecing together the missing details. The clone tool can come in handy here too.

I had to recreate the engine mountings and not knowing the exact model of the bike and having no photo records, I had to use some imagination. Internet references were found and I could get some idea. The huge chunk missing in the top corner and windows down the top right were added using vanishing point, followed by patch and clone. It took around 5 hours mind you and turned into very much a personal challenge.

Motorbike photo before photo repair

Before I started the creases and tears and missing pieces seemed like a daunting task.

Motorbike photo after photo repair

After. Like any restoration I can go on forever, but I had to stop somewhere.

The second restoration consisted of 3 separate photos to make into one. Almost half the photo was missing but fortunately the customer had other wedding photos on that day, which supplied a reference for the coat and the hair and missing chin and background. With the correct selection technique and a fair bit of dodging and burning on separate layers the image was back together and a very good repair was achieved.

wedding photo before photo repair

Before, showing the 3 photos used to complete the photo repair.

One the restoration was complete at a later date I decided to hand colour the image.

Photo restored and hand coloured

This is just a summary of the photo repair techniques involved but if you go back through the posts you will find many of them described in more detail.

When you get a photo as bad as this in need of photo repair, it is seriously tempting to let a quality photo restoration service do it for you. But if you were to tackle this one it might be easiest to airbrush a new back ground or cheat by tightly cropping the photo so there is less work to do. This of course isn’t what restoring is all about.

It is about quality time restoring photos so they look like new from the time and period they were taken.

Creased up old photo restored

Patience is the key, its take a long time to fix a photo like this. Start with patching and retouching away the cracks that are on their own, giving larger and larger areas to sample texture from when you patch some more.Think of the photo as a sliding block puzzle, you are simply moving areas from one place to another to replace a bit that is missing. Sounds easy does it not? Obviously there is a degree of care from where the replacement texture is taken from, so that the new section blends in well. It’s not much good patching a smooth section of sky with texture from somebody’s woolen sweater. Common sense and patience is the recipe for success here.

When it comes to rebuilding the facial areas or areas where you have to be creative with your patching, slow down. Take a look at what you have in front of you and with a bit of imagination and perhaps a rescale here and there, possibly a flip, feather and blend, you can fill in the gaps. For a quality photo repair you may have to re texture afterwards by first rubber stamping in the correct tone from a nearby source and then patching to regain a little texture.

In this case a nose tip had to be borrowed from another photo and blended in. The windows in the back ground had slight re structure and overall tone and definition was improved with dodge and burn in subtle amounts. A low opacity layer of sharpen was added to the finally repaired old photo. Now we have the quality photo restoration we were looking for. You may want to down sample from your high res scan and apply a slight sharpen again depending on the final reproduction size.

Neil Rhodes

Image-Restore.co.uk Providing quality photo restoration Surrey and Farnham area

Photo Restoration

In this example I will describe some of the processes involved in restoring a badly damaged photograph which has been torn, creased and stuck with tape. Bits of the photo are missing and will need to be replaced and restored.

The Jigsaw. Firstly I cut out all pieces and pasted onto new canvas and the positioned on separate layers to do the jigsaw. This was to accurately gage where each piece needed to be and be in perfect alignment ready for photo restoration. Once happy that the pieces were in place I merged layers. I quickly blitzed the scratches and flecks with the clone and heal tool.

The Tape marks. I selected with the manual selection tool and a slight feather then leveled to the same tone as the picture. Then I fixed the edges of the tape marks with the heal and clone tool.

The face. I copied and flipped and distorted the left eye to make a right eye, then lightened and dodged and burned in using a small brush the skin tones, finally I used the heal tool to get some texture back on the tone. Same with the head piece and flower on head piece from dress.

The Background. Using a large heal tool I recreated the background where needed. The bottom left was made from a section of the bottom right once I fixed it, (the right hand side) I flipped the right and pasted into the left hand side.

The Table / Chair. Again I copied and flipped the chair and cloth, and extensively rebuilt the cloth and centre piece on the cloth just using the slight suggestion of a leaf pattern. I used the four leaves and cut and pasted and rotated until I had four sides of a leaf design, then cloned into the middle one of the white roses below the chair, I final tidy up by trimming the outside.

These techniques are described assuming you have some knowledge of Photoshop, so sorry its not a basics type explanation. It also assumes you have an eye for realism. Many thanks for reading.

Providing a Quality photo restoration service