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~1892 Genealogy Picture Restoration


thebestcpu

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I have been my extended family's genealogist for about 20 years. Besides documenting ancestors (back through all male and female lines) I mostly have been collecting stories and when available images to scan (and eventually restore). The work I am sharing is from a cabinet card made in ~1892. I did many scans about 18 years ago, and have been docmenting and identifying the individuals. I recently discovered the identities of a mom and her three children (all separate images) as one of my Great Grand Aunts Lucy Anne (Wheeler) Reese (which I am sharing) and her three children (which are work in progress). A lot of detective work including the genealogy of the photographer to help identify the identities by confirming time the image was taken.
I am just starting to do restoration works on a treasure trove of scanned images and open for any and all feedback. I have a lot to learn (especially in colorization).

The first image is the original cabinet card. Relatively good shape given the age:

Lucy Wheeler full cabinet card original.jpg

Hard to know how much to improve the image so just used my judgement.

Here is the final version. I wanted the borders to be more visible for the viewer and cleaned up yet not perfectly for a sense that it is still an old image:

Lucy-Wheeler-abt-1892-final.jpg


I also did a portrait zoomed in version with the last image colorized. I leveraged the Neural Filter for Colization first and then did some hand work. Adds an intersting dimension yet not sure how much I like it compared to the non-colorized version. I need more practice on picking facial colors espeicially lips. Just a newbie on this front. Here is the starting image"

Lucy-A-Wheeler-portrait-view-original.jpg

Restored view:

Lucy-A-Wheeler-portrait-view.jpg

And colorized version:

Lucy-A-Wheeler-portrait-view-colorized.jpg

Thanks in advance for any comments, feedback, and suggestions for where to learn more.
John Wheeler

FYI- Lucy was around 38 years old when this picture was taken in Ravenna Ohio
 

Argos

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Nice Work! my only comment will be on the colorized one, looking at the eyes looks like she has almost no makeup, so the makeup color/tone on the lips seems too modern to me and throws me off a little bit.

Cheers!
 

thebestcpu

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Nice Work! my only comment will be on the colorized one, looking at the eyes looks like she has almost no makeup, so the makeup color/tone on the lips seems too modern to me and throws me off a little bit.

Cheers!
Thanks @Argos and totally agree. I will plan on studying examples and asking help from thise with more expertise to tune up my skills
 

harleynut97

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Wow.... Nicely done John. It is very rare to come across any kind of photos so old, if this is your family, your very lucky - Carl
 

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