I am trying to restore this photo. I think it is over 90 years old, so, not surprisingly, age has taken its toll and the photo is quite faded. I thought that I could still see details, and therefore I could bring this back to life, but I think I'm hitting the limit of my limited skills. The big problem, at least to me, is that the fading or tarnish is uneven.
I tried the limited tricks that I know, and while there is some improvement, there still looks to be an uneven haze over the picture. The picture below was made by taking the blue channel of the original. Then I created a mask from the original using Select->color range... on the haze. I applied the mask to a level adjustment layer over the blue channel copy. It looks a bit better, but still not right and further tweaks seem to bring more haze back or make the photo too dark.
I'm feeling a bit defeated by this one. Is this picture too far gone? If not, can anyone suggest a plan of attack? Is it just a manual process of burn, dodge, and heal from this point, or is there a more general approach? Should I create a lot more masks based on color and adjust levels for each? I am tempted to just mask the men and the posts and then rebuild or substitute the background with another door, brick, and fencing even though that really violates the rules of restoring photos.
Any suggestions would be appreciated (including suggesting giving up on this one). Thanks.
I tried the limited tricks that I know, and while there is some improvement, there still looks to be an uneven haze over the picture. The picture below was made by taking the blue channel of the original. Then I created a mask from the original using Select->color range... on the haze. I applied the mask to a level adjustment layer over the blue channel copy. It looks a bit better, but still not right and further tweaks seem to bring more haze back or make the photo too dark.
I'm feeling a bit defeated by this one. Is this picture too far gone? If not, can anyone suggest a plan of attack? Is it just a manual process of burn, dodge, and heal from this point, or is there a more general approach? Should I create a lot more masks based on color and adjust levels for each? I am tempted to just mask the men and the posts and then rebuild or substitute the background with another door, brick, and fencing even though that really violates the rules of restoring photos.
Any suggestions would be appreciated (including suggesting giving up on this one). Thanks.