On Wed, 22 Nov 2006 20:31:09 -0800, wrote:
I’ve restored a few hundred old faded, creased, torn, stained, etc. pictures. An acquaintance said he had a picture he’d carried in his wallet for many years because he treasured it, but over time it had deteriated and he wondered if I could restore it. I said I’d give it a try. That was before I saw it. Here it is:
http://tinyurl.com/y9exd3
I’ve never tried to fix anything like this, and have no idea how to approach it. The problem, of course, is the bits of that have flaked away throughout the image. If you blow this image up there are more tiny pieces missing than is apparent in this jpeg I made for viewing.
I’ve read all the other responses to your post, and I agree with them…..to a point. Yes, you can restore this photo, but keep in mind that all of the areas that need to be cloned in, will not look natural. If you only had to clone in a few areas, you could make it look natural, but with that much damage to the original photo, trying to clone in the missing parts could make the photo look unnatural. I say this because I have worked on many photos that were badly damaged (I just finished doing several for my mom’s boss), and while you can make it look much better, there is a point to how much better you can make it look.
An example was a picture my mother sent me of my grandmother. It was a very old picture, and had a lot of cracks in it. The cracks were from the type of paper the photo was printed on. Apparently the paper developed cracks in it as it aged.
I tried to rebuild the picture to make it look natural, but after spending 8 hours just on one arm in the photo, I realized that it was a lost cause. Trying to clone in parts of one arm so as to eliminate the cracks, made the photo look weird…as if there was something wrong with the arm. I had to tell my mother that is wasn’t rebuildable.(turns out my uncle had the original negative of the picture, so I used that to make a good copy.)
What I’m getting at is that there is only so much you can do to rebuild a picture, and when you have to go to extremes to do a rebuild, the end result may not be what you were hoping for. I’m not trying to discourage you here, I just want you to know that not all damaged photos can be rebuilt. I have been pleasantly surprised to do a rebuild that looked impossible, but turned out very well, so you never know.
If you should decide to do a rebuild on that photo, I wish you all the best and hope it turns out well. (it may, you never know until you try.<g>)
Talker