Can this be fixed?

[Queenie]

Hi all,

I'm hoping someone with a better knowledge of photo editing can help me with this photo. My in-laws have had it in a frame in their conservatory for years and I'm not sure if it's gone beyond repair? You can see the original colours where the pic was behind the frame.

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It's one of the only full family shots from that trip to WDW (the teenage lad is my DH) so if there's any way to restore it, I'd really appreciate the advice! I've got this up on flickr at the original scan size if anyone needs to have a closer look, just click the pic and it should go there

Thanks!

 

[zackiedawg]

It would take a lot of work, and probably never be quite perfect as the original was, but yes, it can be recovered quite a bit. I downloaded the tiny version you posted, and just ran it very fast through a few sliders on a basic editing software I have here at work (I have a much better program at home)...and by adjusting contrast & gamma, sliding highlights down, and playing with saturation and color sliders, I was able to detect a fair amount of detail hidden in the blown out areas, and quite a bit of color information still there (the skin tones don't look great, but the clothing colors come through).

I think the keys are going to be: An excellent, high-res scan of the photo - as high as you can crank the resolution of the scanner.
Patience - after the initial contrast, gamma, color, and saturation adjustments, it will be better, but far from perfect. Separating the faded section from the normal area to work on, probably some hand-painting or cloning might be needed in a few areas like matching the sky, fine detail work which means working small sections of photo at a time at 200% viewable, and then trying to match as closely as possible the center portion to the outer ring. Then you can recrop for a normal rectangular print.

A professional digital restorer should be able to get a pretty solid result - or a very good non-pro with photoshop or PSP!

 

[Gdad]

Good advice^^

The hardest part would probably be the young girl since it looks like the details in her clothing are completely lost. If you can get a better starting scan of the image try to make sure it is dark enough or has a better dynamic range to capture detail in this area unless it is actually completely gone in the photograph.

 

[ThurlFan]

OK, somebody has to ask - have you checked to see if a negative or slide still exists? I'm assuming you've gone down that road already, but just in case...

Other than that, I don't have much to add other than to ditto the above.

 

[Queenie]

They are on a cruise at the moment so can't ask about negatives, I will when they're back but it's very doubtful they'd be salvageable. All the photos/negatives are stored in a damp garage or loft despite me explaining that this will only make them worse (they've complained how bad they look now.) They don't seem that bothered about stopping more damage, I just want my baby to have some decent pics of daddy as a kid to complement the thousands of me as a kid! The photos I've seen are in awful condition so I'm trying to get hold of them to make digital copies.

It's a relief to know something might be workable with something this bad, it's one of the worst I've seen in terms of fading. If this could be saved that bodes well for anything I can get scanned. Thanks guys!

 

[klmall]

Here's a couple ideas.

I played with several techniques while waiting for DH to come home tonight.

This is a very rough version but I liked it best. I converted it to black and white and rectangular (lots of stuff in between to even the tones out).

I found out that your Mother in law's pant cuff's are actually striped.

You could also do an interesting version in "posterized" color.

Earlier posters here are right. Full restoration without the original slide or negative would be very time consuming but not impossible.

Good luck!

 

[zackiedawg]

OK...here's an idea of approximately what you can work on, or have a professional restorer work on. This is SUPER SLOPPY WORK! Do not take this for an example of the best you can do...I just wanted to do a 30-minute quickie fix, not really paying attention to the edges, using larger brushes instead of smaller, and working on large swaths of the photo at once rather than small patches at a time. So it's sloppy - but may help give you an idea of approximately what is restorable and what isn't from your scan:

Original:

Processed (quickly and sloppily!!!):

General summary of what I did - Made duplicate layer...then I ran a color balance, set white and black points, adjusted levels a tad, ran it through fade correction, highlight recovery sliders, and then I erased the outside circular border (the part that still looked OK under the frame). This more closely matched the inner ring to the outer ring. Then using separate layers for each, I ran a Topaz adjust in Contrast enhance mode (to recover clothing colors), ran manual color correction to restore skintones, and used the target brush to 'paint' in the sky and sidewalk to the same color and lightness as the outer ring (I was real sloppy on this - just wanted to give you an idea). In each case, I erased away the rest of the layers so each layer only applied where I wanted it to. I then merged all, made new duplicate layer, ran it through Topaz Clean for skin balance, and erased away all but the skin.

That was it for now. It took around 30 minutes, and it is far from perfect. But I think you get the idea that there is color information to be salvaged. My version still has way oversaturated cartoon colors, and far too many haloes and outlines around the heads and borders where I just sloppily threw the brush around. To be done professionally, this might take 8 hours a day over 2 or 3 days! But it can be done to a pretty high standard.

Hope that helps! Best of luck on the recovery - love to see the end results once you get it done!

 

[Frantasmic]

I just want my baby to have some decent pics of daddy as a kid to complement the thousands of me as a kid!

Well, if you can't get the picture salvaged (however I think it is doable as one poster has demonstrated), you could always explain to your child that your husband was a Toon and the acetone got him one day.