Ramblings of a Grouch

I have scanned in a photo of a rather jolly-looking lady, straightened and cropped the scan and am now ready to start restoring.

So the first thing to do at DigitalMemoriesonline is to stop and look. What actually needs to be done? Where are the problem areas? What is the best way to repair the damage? And what would be the best way to present the final image after restoration?

So I load the image into Photoshop and set the View to Print Size (this is the same size on screen as the original scanned photo) and look at the general appearance. And it is obvious that time has transformed the original light sepia tone into a rather unpleasant greenish tinge. The photo has faded, reducing the contrast between the light and dark areas. And there are some dark marks in the background and on the dress, along with a lighter water mark toward the top left.

Time to look a little more closely. So I increase the magnification to 300% and starting in the top left corner I examine the whole image a screen at a time, moving across and down, checking any areas which need attention. By doing this I know that if it looks good at a large magnification then it will be more than acceptable at the normal size. While I inspect the image like this I make notes of any areas that need special treatment - local fading, small areas of discolouration, items of jewellery, textures of clothes and so on. If the original photo is in poor condition I may even print the scan out and write notes on the print to remind myself of details which may get overlooked.

In this photo I see a few things which are not obvious on the original scan - vertical scratch marks near the top and through the hair, a crease in the top right corner, the fabric of the dress is actually a corduroy-like material and there are several dark spots on the face and also on the lace front. But overall there is nothing that cannot be repaired. Most of the damage would be barely visible but it is far better to know that even the smallest detail has been attended to.

The original shot has been printed as a vignette, and I think the best way to restore this picture would be to keep the vignette effect, repair any damage, increase the contrast and apply a light sepia tone. The subject appears to be a jolly, kindly person and deserves to be depicted in a way that makes an attractive photo while retaining a hint of days gone by.

There is no major work to be done to the subject, so I will start by cleaning up the background ready for the subject to shine through. As I will be toning the finished image, I will first convert the scan to black and white - this will speed up the work (less computer memory is needed) and it will also be easier and more effective matching shades of grey rather than colours. And it ensures a more even tone on the finished work.

The obvious way to convert from colour to black and white (or greyscale as it is known) is to simply remove the colour (Image, Adjustments, Desaturate in Photoshop). This will not, however, give a very satisfactory result as it treats all parts of the image equally. Far better to use the Channel Mixer controls. Any colour image is made up from 3 'Channels' (at least in a RGB image, which is how I always tend to work) - Red, Green and Blue. The Red channel tends to show more detail in skin tones, Green shows intricate detail and the Blue usually shows shadows (and defects) better. So by mixing the three channels together I can get a better, more defined image to start with. I then save this image as a separate file to work on, knowing I still have the original scan to revert to should I need it.

And finally I can start on restoring the image, background first.

Until next time ...

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