An example of using clone tool to touch up / fix family photos.

[Locut0s]

I've been slowly working on a family photo project that involves scanning and archiving hundreds and hundred of old family photos. Eventually I plan to have them all online in a searchable, taggable, 'commentable', form that the family can browse. So far I've scanned about 500+ slides and despite a lot of them having dust and scratch marks I'm not going to bother to edit them, too much work. But sometimes a particularly wonderful shot comes along that you feel you have to try to fix up. The shot below is one of the best jems I've come across in the collection so far and makes doing such a project completely worth it. Unfortunately not only was it one of the best shots I've come across it was also in just about the worst condition. So I've been slowly going over the shot touching it up, mainly with the clone tool. In this case I'm using GIMP but the exact same thing applies to Photoshop. BTW I have no idea what all those marks are from. I couldn't remove them from the slide so it's not just simple dust.

BEFORE

AFTER

I've also adjusted the contrast and colours slightly. Still a bit more work left to do but a nice improvement. Does anyone know a good method of removing the long scratches? Cloning doesn't work so well for scratches. Because they traverse large parts of an image scratches cross colour and texture boundaries a lot and these are areas that cloning will not work well on.

 

[Locut0s]

Oh and as for who is in the shot. From left to right:

My Father, his younger brother i.e. uncle of mine (blacked out just for privacy he probably wouldn't mind me posting this but just in case), my late grandmother, my grandfather (I know he wouldn't mind me posting this), my late great grandmother (grandmother's mom), my late great grandmother (grandfather's mom), my late great grandfather (grandfather's father).

 

[xanis]

What you need is the healing brush tool (soft edge) and some patience. See below – I touched up a few of the long scratches. Take a look at your grandfather's shirt and the house in the back-left.

 

[Locut0s]

What you need is the healing brush tool (soft edge) and some patience. See below – I touched up a few of the long scratches. Take a look at your grandfather's shirt and the house in the back-left.

Ahh thanks!! Funny should probably have been using that all along then But I think the results I got with the clone tool up till now are good.

 

[xanis]

Ahh thanks!! Funny should probably have been using that all along then But I think the results I got with the clone tool up till now are good.

The clone tool is really great if you know how to use it. A lot of the time you can get away with the healing brush, though, and the results are acceptable. It really depends on how much time and effort you want to put in.

 

[Locut0s]

The clone tool is really great if you know how to use it. A lot of the time you can get away with the healing brush, though, and the results are acceptable. It really depends on how much time and effort you want to put in.

What do you think of the results so far with my shots?

 

[xanis]

I think you've done a pretty decent job. Old photos can be a giant PITA to touch up, but I think these look pretty decent.

 

[Locut0s]

I think you've done a pretty decent job. Old photos can be a giant PITA to touch up, but I think these look pretty decent.

Ever seen this kind of "dirt" on a slide/negative before?

 

[zinfamous]

cool--I'm actually sitting on a pile of old family photos--most of them WW2 era and earlier, some of them taking by my grandfather during his service.

what type of scanner(s) are you using for photos, negatives, and slides? I actually have a pile of medium format negatives. Not sure how to to work with those...

 

[Locut0s]

cool--I'm actually sitting on a pile of old family photos--most of them WW2 era and earlier, some of them taking by my grandfather during his service.

what type of scanner(s) are you using for photos, negatives, and slides? I actually have a pile of medium format negatives. Not sure how to to work with those...

I actually don't have a flat bed scanner yet. I'm waiting on my uncle to lend me one his company uses. Hopefully it will be of good quality. Once I get that the 2nd phase of the project will begin, scanning in the developed photos. For slides and negatives I'm using a scanner my uncle, the same uncle, picked up for my grandfather. The idea was for my grandfather to use it to archive photos but he never got comfortable using it and the project never went anywhere. So one day while visiting him I asked if he would mind if I borrowed/took the scanner from him and all the slides and photos and did the project for him. He was more than happy at this idea. The scanner is a Plustek OpticFilm 7200 negative/slide scanner. I've since look at it online and it seems it's fairly good quality. I'm scanning everything in at 2400 DPI which results in images roughly 3100x2100 in size. This size gives me the flexibility of creating 8x10 sized printouts at 300 DPI if I should choose to do so at any point in the future. The VAST majority of the shots I have are not of much interest, holiday landscape shots and the like, but you never know what someone in the family might cherish and there are a number gems I come across as well. Shots of your parents and grandparents in their childhood are always fascinating IMHO.

That sounds like a fantastic collection you are sitting on! Digitally arching anything like this, even if they are mundane photos, is quite rewarding.

 

[Jeff7]

I had in mind to do something like that - until I saw how many pictures were in my grandmother's possession. Holy. Ffff-----....
Boxes and boxes of them. We're talking pictures by the cubic foot, going back to when you had to stand still for 15 minutes, and you got the fuzzy image on a small metal plate.

I'd love to have these things preserved, but good lord. This would be an immense undertaking.
I suppose I could at least scan them at high-res and save them as PNG files. Enhancement and such could come later. :hmm:

 

[Locut0s]

I had in mind to do something like that - until I saw how many pictures were in my grandmother's possession. Holy. Ffff-----....
Boxes and boxes of them. We're talking pictures by the cubic foot, going back to when you had to stand still for 15 minutes, and you got the fuzzy image on a small metal plate.

I'd love to have these things preserved, but good lord. This would be an immense undertaking.
I suppose I could at least scan them at high-res and save them as PNG files. Enhancement and such could come later. :hmm:

Yeah in total I wouldn't be surprised if there are 2000+ or more shots in this collection as well. But any such project you do over a LONG time. You just do a little bit here and there whenever you have some spare time. There's no rush and it can/could take years to do. Also once you have a work flow down and get into cranking them out assembly line style you can scan a surprisingly large number of photos in a few hours. And like you said you DON'T edit/enhance hardly any of them. That can come on a per shot basis down the line. Those really old shots you have are screaming to be archived.

 

[Rubycon]

I use content aware to remove "sensor dirt" on pics.

 

[Locut0s]

I use content aware to remove "sensor dirt" on pics.

???

 

[Doppel]

Quite a task you have there. I recently scanned some old film pics that obviously had no backup and were only going to get worse with time. Is a pain to do but glad to have it done.

Make sure you have an offsite backup like Carbonite plus at least one external hard drive going!

 

[Locut0s]

Quite a task you have there. I recently scanned some old film pics that obviously had no backup and were only going to get worse with time. Is a pain to do but glad to have it done.

Make sure you have an offsite backup like Carbonite plus at least one external hard drive going!

Yeah right now I don't have external backup. But at least it's on my RAID 1 array. I should back it up to an external HDD I have here. I also plan to upload all of them (but smaller and in JPG format) to my web site that I'm building.

 

[0roo0roo]

???

aww...

 

[Fritzo]

Strong family resemblance there.

 

[Locut0s]

Strong family resemblance there.

Haha lol. You are right though. But then everything before my father's generation is historically pretty WASPish. My father's side of the family is your typical German, English, Irish,... mix.

 

[MotionMan]

Oh and as for who is in the shot. From left to right:

My Father, his younger brother i.e. uncle of mine (blacked out just for privacy he probably wouldn't mind me posting this but just in case), my late grandmother, my grandfather (I know he wouldn't mind me posting this), my late great grandmother (grandmother's mom), my late great grandmother (grandfather's mom), my late great grandfather (grandfather's father).

Was your uncle an actor, perhaps? (Far right in this picture.)

MotionMan

 

[Locut0s]

Was your uncle an actor, perhaps? (Far right in this picture.)

MotionMan

LOLolol

 

[Fayd]

???

them boobies don't look right.

 

[Fayd]

oh, and your father's hair is badass.

 

[Fritzo]

them boobies don't look right.

Looks more like cancer D:

 

[lxskllr]

Haha lol. You are right though. But then everything before my father's generation is historically pretty WASPish. My father's side of the family is your typical German, English, Irish,... mix.

Your father kind of looks like a Kennedy.