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Posted

This is my Dad's favorite photo of my Mom, and what with the cracks, chips and color fading, it is in pretty sorry shape right now....only from 40 years ago! The Photo place wanted way too much to restore it....

Thanks!

8_1mainthe60s.jpg

Posted

after ten minutes w/ the 'heal' tool but i'm a hack at photos.  wonder if PhotoShop LE has the "heal" tool?

healing alone won't do it. You'll have to carefully copy and past using the stamp tool to reconstruct some lost 'pixels'. I can understand why a pro might want quite some money for the job. It likely takes several hours for a real good result. The eyebrow will be particularly difficult to get right. With better resolution, the resolution of the touch-ups needs to match which really means a lot more time.

great pic.

yes.

Posted

Hey, thanks guys! :tup Going to print it out and bring it with the other photos we're taking to the service....would still like to know if anyone has had much success with some of those photo programs you see at Best Buy, etc....got a lot of crappy polaroids I'd like to fix up....

Posted

Berigan, you might want to check out the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP).

It's free (downloadable) software, and has some pretty sophisticated photo retouching features. I've used it under Linux, but there is also a version for Windows.

One major complaint with the program is that its user interface is difficult (non-intuitive) to use, but I believe that the newer versions have done things to make it better.

Here's an article showing some of its features: Photo Touch Up and Enhancement in the GIMP

Posted

Photo touch-up software will NOT get you the results you want.

You need photo touch-up software handled by a pro.

BTW: I've had an old photo of my grandma (colors faded on cheap print) restored by a pro who did much of the work manually (cleaned it up digitally, then went at it with pens (!?), brushes (?), airbrush (?)). No matter what, the result was stunning(ly expensive).

I gave it to my mom for her 65th birthday. Her smile was well-worth the money I invested. Today it's the only thing allowed to stand on her grand piano.

Posted

Photo touch-up software will NOT get you the results you want.

You need photo touch-up software handled by a pro.

I agree. Maybe you need to give it a little go yourself to find out how difficult this really is. The efforts posted above are only scratching the surface and could be quite rude in the details as those were lacking anyhow from the lo-res photo you posted. If you want good quality prints, you should really consider investing an appropriate amount in the restoration.

Posted (edited)

Photo touch-up software will NOT get you the results you want.

You need photo touch-up software handled by a pro.

I agree. Maybe you need to give it a little go yourself to find out how difficult this really is. The efforts posted above are only scratching the surface and could be quite rude in the details as those were lacking anyhow from the lo-res photo you posted. If you want good quality prints, you should really consider investing an appropriate amount in the restoration.

Being that the photo is in color is the biggest problem, correct? (That and being lo-res of course) I had some free version of Photoshop on my first computer back in 1998, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well I was able to "fix" a b&W photo of my Grandfather as a boy from the turn of the century. It had a crack in the photo like the one above had....I just haven't had a photo program on my computer in years, was hoping a layperson could work wonders with some program, but I guess not...at least not yet....will get this one properly restored someday, and will have to try out Moe Snyder! :g:rolleyes:

Edited by BERIGAN
Posted

Conrad, it's easy to see why your Dad values this picture. Jim Dye did a fine job, all things considered, but he was working with a low resolution image. If you could do a higher resolution scan and give some of us that to work with, I think the result could be quite remarkable. PhotoShop is a remarkable program for this sort of thing.

Posted

I'm going to disagree about the need for a pro to do the job - I learned photoshop on my own by just practicing and practicing, and did my own work for both the front and rear covers of my jazz history, which looks pretty damn good -

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