Ramblings of a Grouch

Hair done*

Just a few final steps before this DigitalMemoriesonline project is finished. The hair in this photograph is in fairly good condition - a few black spots, a couple of light patches and several light scratches running top right to bottom left. There were also a few blemishes in the background near the hair which I left until this stage to ensure accurate restoration.

In the areas where there is little detail I used the Patch tool. Areas containing detail and texture required the Clone tool, while the scratches were dealt with at high magnification with the Clone tool, this time using a soft brush to eliminate hard edges in the repaired areas. Attention has to be paid to light, shade and texture when dealing with the hair.

This completed the restoration part of the project, but I was not quite finished. The image as a whole was still a little washed out and lacked 'punch' - low contrast and soft edges.

There are many ways of addressing these problems - I considered using a Levels adjustment to increase the contrast, followed by sharpening the whole image. However, I decided to copy the image, apply a High Pass filter. This filter enhances the edges of the image and increases the contrast of the tones without introducing unwanted effects such as fringing or taking the whites and blacks too far. The result is quite frightening as, on its own, this adjustment is way over the top for our purposes. But by combining the new layer with the original image , dropping the opacity of the new layer and erasing the lower half of the image, I achieved a pleasing balance.

So we are now ready to attack the final stages - sepia toning and adding a border.

Until next time ...

*Note that this article appears out of place as it disappeared one day and had to be restored some months later.

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So finally the DigitalMemoriesonline is on the home straight. I need to apply a sepia tone, add a border and title the photograph.

There are many different ways to apply a sepia tone to a photograph, but whatever method is used the image has to be converted to the RGB colour mode first (up to now I have been working on a black & white image). For this example I tried three toning methods, each producing subtly different results:

1. Colorize the image. Open the Hue & Saturation control, click the Colorize box and set the hue to a sepia effect.

2. Adjustment layer. Create a new adjustment layer, fill it with a solid sepia tone. Change the Blending Mode to Soft Light and drop the Opacity to 70%. (Remember a layer is like a clear plastic sheet on top of the image, so this effect is like looking at the photograph through a coloured filter).

3. Duotone. A black and white image is a monotone - there is only one colour (black) in the image. A duotone can be created to apply one tone to the shadows and another tone to the highlights, with the mid tones blending evenly between the two. This is the effect I chose for this photo, along with a slight Curves adjustment to bring the contrast up a little.

Looking at those three samples above there would appear to be very little difference between the methods, but trust me - there are noticeable differences to the full sized photograph!

I then added a narrow white border to frame the image. Very often photographs from this era were borderless prints but I find that a narrow border helps make sure no part of the final image is hidden when mounted in a picture frame.

And finally the text was added, not something I would normally do but I think it is a nice touch to remind us who this lady was. I chose a font which reflected the style of the photo, Brush Script, which is not too formal nor too 'flowery'.

And there we have the finished article, which can be viewed on the DigitalMemoriesonline Samples page.

Until next time ...

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Just a few final steps before this DigitalMemoriesonline project is finished. The hair in this photograph is in fairly good condition - a few black spots, a couple of light patches and several light scratches running top right to bottom left. There were also a few blemishes in the background near the hair which I left until this stage to ensure accurate restoration.

In the areas where there is little detail I used the Patch tool. Areas containing detail and texture required the Clone tool, while the scratches were dealt with at high magnification with the Clone tool, this time using a soft brush to eliminate hard edges in the repaired areas. Attention has to be paid to light, shade and texture when dealing with the hair.

This completed the restoration part of the project, but I was not quite finished. The image as a whole was still a little washed out and lacked 'punch' - low contrast and soft edges.

There are many ways of addressing these problems - I considered using a Levels adjustment to increase the contrast, followed by sharpening the whole image. However, I decided to copy the image, apply a High Pass filter. This filter enhances the edges of the image and increases the contrast of the tones without introducing unwanted effects such as fringing or taking the whites and blacks too far. The result is quite frightening as, on its own, this adjustment is way over the top for our purposes. But by combining the new layer with the original image , dropping the opacity of the new layer and erasing the lower half of the image, I achieved a pleasing balance.

So we are now ready to attack the final stages - sepia toning and adding a border.

Until next time ...

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OK, so the DigitalMemoriesonline photo has got the background fixed (unless we decide to tweak it toward the end of the restoration) and it's time to look at the main subject.

Now the original photo was very flat and washed out. If I start restoring the main parts now I will only have a rough idea of the finished effect, so I need to boost the contrast to see what I am really working with.

As with most things, Photoshop offers an 'easy fix' for contrast - it is found in Image, Adjustments, Brightness & Contrast. The tool opens to reveal sliders to alter (you guessed it) the brightness of the image and the contrast. These controls would certainly improve the image, the trouble is that they work globally - the whole image is adjusted by the same amount. While this may seem a reasonable course of action, it isn't. And the reason why can be seen in the Histogram.

A Histogram is just a way of showing what is going on in an image in a way that we can easily understand. In Photoshop, go to Image, Adjustments, Levels and the Histogram will pop up (along with the controls to adjust the image). This is the Histogram for our photo:

So what on earth does that tell us? Basically it's a graph just like you studied at school, with zero at the far left and 255 at the far right. And this one has a dark blodge (technical, eh?) in the middle. On a Histogram, zero corresponds to pure black (full shading) while 255 corresponds to pure white (no shading). The values between represent the various shades of grey between white and black. The height of the blodge shows how much of a particular shade of grey is present in the image.

"So what?" you may say, as did I when I first saw a Histogram. But it turns out that it is an essential tool for photographic work - essential enough that all decent digital cameras allow you to see the histogram before you take a photograph. And this is what our Histogram is telling us.

The Histogram doesn't actually start at zero - it only really has any value around 82 on the horizontal scale (the blodge starts climbing up at that point). And it has died away aorund a value of 186. So there is no pure black and no pure white in the image, which we can tell by looking at the image itself. What is not to obvious is that we actually have a pale grey as the lightest tone and a dark grey as the darkest tone. The tones actually run from 82 to 186 and it is this small range which causes the photo to lack contrast and look washed out. Our 'white' and 'black' are actually the grey tones shown below.

The cure? Below the horizontal scale on the Histogram are triangular sliders (not very obvious in the picture above) which allow us to adjust the tonal range of the image - the lightest parts are made pure white, the darkest parts pure black and the tones between are 'stretched out' between the two. This is a very easy adjustment to make and, if you only make one adjustment to your photographs then this is the one to go for.

Photoshop also has another way to adjust the tonal range, known as the Curves adjustment tool. This is a very powerful weapon that can at once seem intimidating, awkward and downright confusing. It is based on the same adjustments as the Levels tool, but whereas the Levels tool affects the all the tones in an image, the Curves tool lets us adjust shadows, highlights and midtones separately (and indeed, in a colour photograph the individual colours can be adjusted separately). This is the tool I used to bring back the contrast and clarity in our photo to allow me to see the blemishes more clearly and to judge the effects of the restoration as it will be seen on the finished work. It also had the advantage of putting a little texture into the background, which I think is quite a pleasing effect.

Compare the image at the top of this article with that from the previous article here and you will see the power of the Curves tool.

And here is the Histogram of after using the Curves tool, showing the tones running evenly from white to black.

And I've now run out of time, so I'll start restoring in the next article.

Until next time ...

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And so we finally get to see what DigitalMemoriesonline is all about. I have cropped the original scan to 5 inches by 7 inches (the proposed final print size) and converted to greyscale. As I mentioned in the previous article in this series, I used the Channel Mixer in Photoshop for the conversion. The final image contains most of the Red channel, some of the Blue channel and a small amount of Green.

I then set about repairing the background. The two main areas needing attention were a patch of dark blemishes to the left and the crease in the top right corner. These were both restored using the Clone Stamp tool.

As the name implies, the Clone tool allows the user to set a point to copy from (the Source) and then the tool is moved across the area to be repaired, cloning the source image over the blemish as it goes. As such, it is an invaluable tool for restoration work. However, there are several pitfalls to be aware of - any blemishes or marks from the Source are faithfully copied to the restored area, lines may be seen at the edges of the restored area and differences in the lightness, tone or pattern of the Source will stick out like a sore thumb. Adjusting the opacity and brush settings of the Clone tool and choosing the Source area carefully will minimise these unwanted effects and result in an invisible repair:

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Blemishes gone and ...

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... crease gone.

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When Photoshop 7.0 gave way to Photoshop CS, two new tools became available - the Healing Brush and the Patch Tool. These work in a similar way to the Clone Stamp tool in that they clone a designated area to a new location. Where they differ is that they use intelligent algorithms (clever calculations, if you prefer) to blend the Source image into the existing area to be repaired. This makes life a little easier but care should still be taken to ensure the repair is invisible.

And so the background has been repaired ready to show off the main subject. Under magnification there were many darker blemishes which I repaired using a combination of the three tools mentioned above. This has resulted in a rather flat-looking background. This will probably produce a pleasing effect on the finished photograph, though I will bear in mind that a slightly more textured background may be needed - something to be decided when the restoration is nearing completion.

Until next time ...

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