Imagine one evening while you try to put order in the old attic,
amidst the dark and the dust gathered by the years, you discover
an old photo album, last century's early version of a home
multimedia database...A photo album, containing mostly black &
white photos of family elders -occasions like weddings,
gatherings, celebrations, trips around the world, full on
sentimental value, and even - why not - historical value. After
all, at day end, everyone's own history is a part of the world's
history - seeing it from a philosophical point of view.
But unfortunately -as it happens with old technology storage
media - time leaves its trace on the photos. For instance
visible marks on the surface, dust and scratches and
discolouring and fading are constantly populating the surface of
each of your valuable photos: humid, photo-hungry germs are
feeding their appetite starting from each photos edges, slowly
but steadily progressing towards an irreversible victory,
turning history into oblivion. Unless... Oh, yes, using magic
technology, a perceptive eye and a steady hand can reinstate the
photo-historical status-quo, eliminate or correct any
side-effects, any signs or scars this battle of time has
left-over. And the good thing is that there is no need for
expensive technology, nor rocket science is needed: Any good old
image editing application with a scanner will do - and in case
you feel nostalgic about old storage media types, a printer with
photo paper will complement the task. So let's say, you have the
photos, you have the technology... What next? How do you
proceed, quickly and efficiently enough to restore any kind of
printed images? Are there some tricks you should have in mind,
which can help towards this goal?
Well, the answer is yes and no. Despite the power tools we have
these days even in our home computers (with Adobe Photoshop on
Windows and Mac, as well as Gimp on Linux as primary examples)
capable of easily performing a huge number of impressive digital
photo tasks, restoration of old photos is still closely related
to a users aptitude and artistic eye, as much as in his good
knowledge and effective use of the application tools.
For example, in Photoshop there are embedded filters, which
automatically remove small dust and scratches: some clever image
recognition algorithm works there, that recognises unwanted
elements by identifying irregular fluctuations in the bitmap's
pixel colour depth mapping. But this works only relatively well,
as the underlying algorithm is not lossless: the more strongly
the filter is applied, the more the loss of the image quality in
terms of sharpness and details. Furthermore, it is strongly
dependent on the image contents. Dust, scratches and other
elements are more easily removed from the photo's uniform shaded
areas, i.e. when photos are picturing elements like walls,
surfaces, sky, clouds etc. than from, say, a landscape with lots
of details, a patterned canvas or a photos that contains a
number of people.
As for the use of tools like the powerful Adobe Photoshop's
Clone Stamp, or the newer Spot Healing Brush, which allows
sampling and copying to pixel level, when it comes to heavy
damaged images, the user's intuition is the only serious tool to
consider. For example, it could be the case that an image is so
much damaged, that parts of it are literally missing - ok, if it
is a landscape with flowers, sampling will work well, but when
the damaged part contains elements of a particular form, like
peoples faces or other body parts, interior design or
architectural elements, then copying, sampling and spot healing
is not enough. Sometimes the user would have to re-create these
elements; identifying and copying similar details from somewhere
else in the picture could be also possible, but most of the
times angles and light shades would be different. And especially
when the damaged areas are affecting elements like peoples
faces, hands, animals etc. or even everyday objects like chairs,
or clothes with special details like shoes etc., the restoring
task is even more difficult: these objects that would need
recreation, have aesthetics that are well integrated within our
visual perception of 'how things should look like'.
When the desired result is an image aesthetically correct and
therefore usable in many ways, there is no magical recipe into
which tools in what order and what functions the restorer should
apply when working on the task. More so when the task is to put
colour in black and white photos, especially with people on them
which involves large areas of skin. A correct skin colour is
something that all professional photographers and image editors
are looking for, especially when images are going to be printed.
Putting colour in a black & white image is one of the most
difficult tasks a digital image restorer will have to perform.
Imagination and creative intuition as well as experience and
advanced knowledge of the tools available are strongly required
in order to achieve sometimes a just-bearable result. As there
is a very fine step easy to be crossed before a beautiful face
pictured in black & white is turned to a pink, red or yellow
dull alien one, such is the fine line that can differentiate a
good photo restoration from inadequate attempts sold as
expertise.
CardsMadeEasy, The
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