November 14, 2009

Saving 55 year old Christmas photograph

ORIGINAL

EDITED

EDITED & CROPPED

Save My Shot 11-14-2009
Saving a faded old Christmas photograph: photograph is approximately 55 years old.

EXIF Data:Original Photo Scanned: Kodak 5300 AiO at 300dpi

I scanned the photograph into Photoshop and saved an original. Then I saved it again as an "edit" file - which in my workflow means that it is a photo in the process of being edited.

I first duplicated the layer (CTRL-J).

I clicked on the Create new fill or adjustment layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette, and chose Levels. I adjusted the levels to get a good tonal range from very dark to very light. On this photograph, it meant moving the arrow in from both sides to where the darks and lights were in the histogram.

I clicked on the Create new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette and renamed this layer "Spot Heal". I used the Spot Healing Tool (J) or (Shift-J to cycle through the healing tools) to clean up small dark and light spots and some small creases.

I clicked on the Create new layer icon again to add another layer and renamed it "Clone". I used the Clone Tool (S) to clone out all of the creases and discolored spots in the photograph.

Next I clicked on the Create new fill or adjustment layer icon and chose Black & White. When the dialog box came up, I adjusted the yellows and greens to get a good range of black and white.

I added another blank layer by selecting the Create new layer icon, and using the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M), I made a selection around the image, then inverted the selection by going to Select - Inverse from the Menu at the top of the page. This created a selection around the border of the image. I then using the Brush Tool, set to White to paint in the entire selection, making a nice clean white border.

Then I made a new composite image at the top of the stack by hitting Shift-Ctrl-E. I duplicated this layer, and put the duplicate layer in Screen blending mode to lighten the girl and her toys. The background was lighter than I would like, so I put a mask on this layer by clicking on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette. The layer mask was white, and using a medium sized soft brush with black selected, I painted over the background to bring back the darker background.

I then merged this layer down (Ctrl-E), then created another duplicate layer (Ctrl-J) to do sharpening and noise reduction.

Next, I sharpened the image using High Pass Sharpen - by going to Filter-Other-HighPass. I adjusted the slider until I could see some details, and changed the blending mode to Soft Light. I merged this layer down (Ctrl-E), then made another duplicate layer to do noise reduction.

I don't normally use other filters when doing Save My Shot Saturdays, but when there is a LOT of noise, I find that Noise Ninja does a very nice job of smoothing out the noise. And that is what I did here - I ran the image through the Noise Ninja filter to smooth it out.

I decided that I really preferred to crop the image, and did so, then added a white border to the new crop.