Where to start?

[uk2usa]

I have decided that for my Mother's birthday this year I am giving her a blurb.com book that I am compiling... it is called "Two Little Boys" and is a colection of as many pictures of me and my brother as kids as I can find.

But I am having some issues... most of the shots were taken in the 1970's with a polaroid or instamatic (110 film) and are not well exposed and have not been properly stored - essentially some pretty bad pics have deteriorated further over the years.

What are the first steps to take when restoring photos? I have ordered "Adobe Photoshop Restoration & Retouching (3rd Edition) (Voices That Matter)" by
Katrin Eismann, but that wil take a week to be delivered.

I have enclosed an example ... this is a shot of my bruv fishing (apologies that it is 90 degrees from vertical)... any attempts at retouching/restoration I make seem to make the pic look worse.

Does anybody have any tips?

[kevgermany]

Is this what you want to do?

I don't use PS, so ca't give you instructions there.
I used the white shirt to correct the colour cast
I lightened the shaddows a lot using a curve adjustment
I didn't increase saturation as the face shadow has a bad colour cast and high saturation from being in shadow and being recovered.
I dragged the colours from the face shadow towards a more normal flesh tone. (this is available as a PS plug in - color mechanic from Digital Light & Color - Welcome - What's New )
You could also use this to correct the green caste in the sky that's crept in fromt he colour balancing.
I've sharpened lightly.

You'll get better results scanning to 48 bit tiffs. Then editing, then if necessary converting to jpg.

There's an excellent book by Ctein, available from Amazon, that covers all you'll need to do, he refers to your book as an alternative source.

Amazon.com: Digital Restoration From Start to Finish: How to repair old and damaged photographs: Books: Ctein

[kevgermany]

Here's a second go, I balanced the white in the sky as well.
Cropping the white out of the scan before balancing helps.

[uk2usa]

That is a fantastic place for me to start.... thanks. I never thought about correcting something like a white shirt and moving on from there.... what a great idea.

I guess I have about 500 of these to get through, so it is going to be a pretty big job - I have until mid April to get it completed before the book needs to be ordered.

Thanks again - have some karma!

[kevgermany]

Alex, ta for the K

Starting point for sorting out colour castes is usually to find something that should be white or a neutral grey. Clothes can be good, but often get a colour from the skin underneath. In the second version I used the clouds, as highlights, followed by the shirt. There isn't a good dark grey, so I left the shadows.

[Lee4145]

Alex here's another version. I'm headed out but had 5 minutes for this.

Honestly it's a TLR script and some shadow / hilight and that's about it besides a little healing. Oh, and I set the white and black points with a threshold layer and the curves eyedroppers. Sorry.

[jfrancho]

I would leave it alone. Part of the allure and provenance of these old photos is their inherent "oldness." Great old snapshot BTW.

[uk2usa]

Originally Posted by jfrancho

I would leave it alone. Part of the allure and provenance of these old photos is their inherent "oldness." Great old snapshot BTW.

I know what you mean... but I really want the images to be as clear as possible for the gift. I have learned over the last week that over-processing some pictures really make them a lot worse than the underexposed originals!!

I guess I will keep working on them and only fix the ones that benefit from it.

Thanks.

PS. Thanks Lee and Kev.... your versions are WAAAAAAAY better than mine!

[jfrancho]

Is this as full res as it comes?

[uk2usa]

Yes... this is the original print scanned to largest size. The file was too big for it to be emailed to me so I had my stepfather upload it to flickr and I downloaded the largest size from there.