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[WIP]Water Damage Repair


Tristen Shaw

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Ok, this is my first attempt at a restoration other than scratches and holes.

It's a bit ambitious and might very well be over my head considering I don't truly know how to work things like "color balance", "Curves", and "hue/saturation" in any other way than "play with it till it works."

So here it is, and I'm hoping for some input and suggestions to help me improve my ability. :)

Greg Lucas water-damaged fireman.jpg

inprogress.jpg

All I have on there is a Hue/Saturation a Color Balance, and a Dust/Scratch as well as a little patch tool work.
 

Tom Mann

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It's almost certainly too mucked up to extract any useful color info from it. I would suggest you turn it into a B&W and do a full re-colorization on it.

Just a few days ago in this forum, there was a very similar situation with an old, damaged photo of a man on a horse. The final recolorization demos were quite nice.

Tom
 

Tristen Shaw

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Thanks for the advice!

Here are a couple questions:

How do you know when a photo doesn't have enough color to extract?

How do you recolor parts of a photo where you don't even know what the blobs of shape and color in the background is?
 

Tom Mann

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Thanks for the advice!
Here are a couple questions:

How do you know when a photo doesn't have enough color to extract?

I really don't want to appear glib, but the answer is either (a) from (sad) experience ;-), or, (b) try it yourself in every way you can imagine and slowly build up your own sense of what can and can not be done.

How do you recolor parts of a photo where you don't even know what the blobs of shape and color in the background is?

Again, I don't want to appear glib, but mostly is just guessing, pure and simple. If you get lucky and there seems to be something identifiable in that area (eg, a military uniform with medals), try to look it up or find other photos from that collection that might actually show the item(s).

Cheers,

Tom M

PS - When I get back to my PS computer late tonight, I'll take a quick look at it and give you a bit more informed opinion.
 

Steve

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I agree with Tom here.
Convert the image to B&W and recolor it.
Working on a B&W restore is also much easier than a color restore, at least that's been my experience.

When colors in an image (R,G,& B) are uniformly skewed it's pretty easy to restore the proper colors.
Old photos lose Red quicker than Blue and Green and that gets tough.
With damaged photos it's anyone's guess.
 

Tom Mann

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"PS - When I get back to my PS computer late tonight, I'll take a quick look at it and give you a bit more informed opinion."

I took another look. It's definitely in bad shape. I tried various global corrections, and, as I expected, they didn't yield anything useful.

This is definitely a case where you recolor a B&W version. At least if you start with something like the attached version, you can use your drawing skills, photoshop brushes, and related techniques to synthesize realistic detail and colors.

T
 

Attachments

  • Greg_Lucas_water-damaged fireman-tjm01_orig_cropped-acr_heavy-ps02b_heavy-04_BW.jpg
    Greg_Lucas_water-damaged fireman-tjm01_orig_cropped-acr_heavy-ps02b_heavy-04_BW.jpg
    79.1 KB · Views: 47

Tristen Shaw

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Wow, that is some amazing work!

I appreciate the leg up!

Would you mind telling me how you went about getting the cracks and such off so nicely?

Did you just use patch tool, clone brush, and healing brush? Or did you use some other method?
 

Tristen Shaw

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Alright, here is my start on colorizing the image.

I'd like you guys opinions on the skin and hair colors and how I can improve them.

Also any general tips on skin and hair that relate to this kind of work are more than welcome!

EDIT: Forgot to lower the opacity on the yellow so I added the new image.

inprogress2.jpg
 

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  • inprogress2.jpg
    inprogress2.jpg
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Last edited:

iDad

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I think if you duplicate that layer put the top layer in hard light mode you may be more satisfied with the colors, try it. just a thought
 

Tom Mann

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Wow, that is some amazing work!
I appreciate the leg up!
Would you mind telling me how you went about getting the cracks and such off so nicely?
Did you just use patch tool, clone brush, and healing brush? Or did you use some other method?

Thanks, but I would hardly call it amazing. All I did was my usual trick of going wild with the patch tool in that big area, and maybe finished off with a few of low opacity strokes with the clone/stamp tool. I probably spent a total of only a couple of minutes on this, and my lack of effort definitely shows. LOL. If it was my photo and was larger in size, I would have been more careful.

BTW, nice start to the colorization. Don't forget the lips, and I usually vary the saturation from area to area on the face and in the hair. It makes it look a lot more realistic. There were a spate of threads about colorization of old B&W photos on this forum about 6 months to a year ago. If you do a search on the word, "colorization", my user name, and/or one of our other members, ALB, you should find them.

T
 

Tom Mann

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PS - iDad's suggestion is very good. Give it a try - it's kind of an automatic way to vary the saturation with brightness.

PS#2 - Also, I forgot to mention in my previous post that I did use the Dust and Scratches filter on the original image before I worked on it with the patch tool. To get the best effect / least damage to the image, I always apply D&S in two layers. One is in lighten mode, and the other is in darken layer blending mode. On the first layer, I use the BlendIF sliders to lighten only the dark or black spots. With the second layer, I target only the lightest tones and only darken white spots.

T
 

MikeMc

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Thanks, but I would hardly call it amazing. All I did was my usual trick of going wild with the patch tool in that big area, and maybe finished off with a few of low opacity strokes with the clone/stamp tool. I probably spent a total of only a couple of minutes on this, and my lack of effort definitely shows. LOL. If it was my photo and was larger in size, I would have been more careful.

BTW, nice start to the colorization. Don't forget the lips, and I usually vary the saturation from area to area on the face and in the hair. It makes it look a lot more realistic. There were a spate of threads about colorization of old B&W photos on this forum about 6 months to a year ago. If you do a search on the word, "colorization", my user name, and/or one of our other members, ALB, you should find them.

T

But it IS AMAZING Tom, that you get soooo close with seemingly no effort, but I do know that experience is your trick!

I agree that is a great start Tristen ! Remember to use lots of layers, and save often. Keep it coming.:cool2:
 

Tristen Shaw

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You guys are so helpful!

I appreciate all the support and the advice. :)

Trust me, I use lot of layers and saves lol.

I'll post an update soon. Later this week my Wacom Connect will be here and I'm hoping that my work will improve. :)
 

Tristen Shaw

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Ok, here is a minor update, gave the man some lip color.

inprogress2.jpg

Now, the problem I'm having here is not being able to to identify enough detail in the background to make a stab at what anything might be or how to color it.

Any suggestions?
 

Tom Mann

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Hi Tristen -

Like you, I also couldn't figure out what was really in the background of your image.

In such cases, if I want to continue, I'm forced to switch from a restoration mode of operation (where my goal is to accurately restore the original image) to being more of an illustrator, where it's OK if I decide to drop in some feasible / reasonable background.

Of course, the usual problem is that the source images for the background are usually in vastly better shape than the foreground image, so you'll have to do a major antiquing job on them to make them match.

In this case, for a background that one might actually see, with the help of Google Images (except for the 1st), I can imagine...

firefighting equipment,
D7B_6193nef-LR3-jpg_900px-01.jpg
(my photo - feel free to use it)

a group of other firefighters,
korean-fire-trucks-feb-2013-30.jpg

korean-fire-trucks-feb-2013-37.jpg


firefighters in action,
F080102KG02.jpg

pompier-psc1.jpg

horrified bystanders,
black_women_bystanders-29_997-710_resize-xnv_500px_wide.jpg

or even just a suggestion of a fire in back of the camera by a simple warm dusty background.
fire3_gallery__591x400.jpg

Note: In case you want to use the original of one of these, I embedded the URL for each image in the IPTC caption field.
 

Tom Mann

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Of course, in addition to matching the lighting (eg, from the left or from the right), and getting an appropriate ratio of sizes / perspective, you'll also have to distress / antique whatever background image you select.

For example, if I wanted to use the photo of the 911 women bystanders, I might distress it to look something like this, and then re-color it as well the subject, so that there is no glaring color mismatch between the two.

black_women_bystanders-29_997-710_resize-TJM_FX3_ps01a-02_500px_wide.jpg

Of course, there is nothing forcing you to use the entire background image -- you might only want to use patches of it.

Cheers,

Tom
 

Tom Mann

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I couldn't resist playing with it for a bit myself. I finally decided on just a simple OOF version of the 911 women bystander photo, but realized that a huge factor is adding enough of the right type of grain / noise to the background to match the subject.

Have fun ... try it yourself with other backgrounds. I'm sure you will do better than my little quick and dirty experiment.

T

Greg_Lucas_water-damaged fireman-tjm01_orig_cropped-acr_heavy-ps02b_heavy-05_BW_colorized-02jpg_.jpg
 

Tristen Shaw

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lol thanks for the suggestions!

And your faith in me is appreciated, if a little misplaced :p.

Pretty much each and every thing you said is something I have yet to learn lol.

But, that is why I am here. I'll start hitting the tutorials and see what I can come up with.
 

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