a little advice please | restoring an old newspaper photos

mick

tiny and horrible quality.

i said i'd do it. it's photos (the only ones) of the first ferry we had here. (the ferry trips are getting so expensive that we're trying to restore the old wharf. the pilings are still in great shape, but the deck was dismantled by the province about 10 years ago. the pics would be used as part of an awareness campaign.)

*sigh* i said i'd do it before i saw the pic.

i'm actually, atm, just sort of painting over it and trying to 100% identify everything. the top pic of the men on the boat will be reasonably easy; the bottom pic is a nightmare.

i figure a lot of you have experience with trying to salvage really crappy graphics; i'm hoping for tips or tricks that will help me not fail utterly.




here's the tiff of the newpaper clipping: help?


x

nimmot

linky no worky mick

mick

email notification do worky, though.

i fixed the link, nimmot, thanks. i set a new record. there were 5 errors in that one link.

nimmot

HA! where did you get these?!?!?!

seriously, i don't think there is anything you can do with them. i was thinking that the jpg you posted was a very small representation of the original file but NOPE, that's pretty much it. honestly, at 75 dpi i don't think there is enough pixel data to be able to salvage anything out of these. did somebody scan these and email them to you? do you have original photos that could possibly be sent to some place to be drum scanned?

sorry mick. probably not the response you were looking for but after taking a look at it, that is my opinion. garbage in garbage out imo.

mondo

Hmm. It would be less painful in the end just to draw them from scratch...with a felt-tip pen...heh. Do they have to remain as photographs? Could they be reproduced by hand and called an "artist's impression"? When does this have to be done by? Could you get someone from, say, the other side of the world to do it and post the pictures to you? Or scan them in and email them to you? When will there be an end to my questions?

mick

nimmot... yeah, that's as good as it gets. it's a newspaper clipping from someone's photo album. the original pic died in a business fire.

i have to do something with it; i said i would.

i've got a couple of weeks.

mondo.. your ad intrigues me, and i would like to subscribe to your newsletter. *nod*


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GearedUp

Is it possible to rescan the clipping at a higher resolution, with a better scanner? That would help a lot.

Meska

...and i was going to add, rotate the scan on the scanner. On occasion half or more of the screen effect can be removed just by not squaring up an image on a flatbed.

nimmot

exactly like GU and mesk said. rotating it should help get rid of the moire pattern. scanning at a higher res on a better scan would help you out tremendously. like i said, there just isn't enough pixel data to do anything with other than redrawing it. but i'd hate to see you do that if you didn't have to.

bull

if you get a better scan, you might try the median noise/gaussian blur/unsharp mask filters combo to synthesize some definition. command-a, command-j the entire image to a new layer, median at no more than 2, gaussian at no more than 2, unsharp mask 500/1 to 2 pixels/0 thresholds, then adjust the opacity to suit...but without a better scan, that'll just get you some defined screen dots, unfortunately.

or the gurus above may know a better way, this is a pretty old [many versions ago] method...

mick

first order of business then.. see about getting another scan.

good advice here. what i know about scanners and resolution can be written on my pinkie-tip.

i'd have never thought of rotating and scanning again.

i had no idea they were at 75dpi. heh

and.. bull's tiny tut is damfine. i've clipped and saved it.

i'm encouraged. and i MAY have until July 1


x


ps.. i like mondo's idea very much about the artist's impression. i'd like to maybe do both.

mick

amazingly, i was able to connect with the person who has the clippings. this time I scanned them.

come to find that they are "preserved" with a sheet of sticky transparent stuff. ojoy.

i rotated, scanned at 250 dpi, then rotated it so i could see it. the polkadots are much smaller, y'all were right.

it IS a better pic. there are elements in the other pic that i misidentified, and i'm feeling a little more confident.

comments, please? i'm looking for magic, here.

almost 7MB psd

nimmot

here was a good link to some tips

Ve.

Oh good. I have to admit I was stumped as to what to do for it..even After mick re-scanned...it's in sad shape.

nicko

mickles: i tinkered about a bit and got to this:



IF you can get another chance to re-scan that'd be good.

Re-scanning at insanely high res (1000, 2400dpi - the more the better) then reducing the dpi in photoshop will cause the image to be interpolated... basically the gaps between the dot pattern magically fill in. This has worked well for me in the past

I reduced the dpi from 250 (as your original) to 100.

mick

nicko, that's a dramatic improvement. zowie

i've bookmarked the moiré page, nimmot. .. heh and i thought moire was all about fabric. *nod* it's about weave and light.

you have no idea, people, how utterly grateful i am. thanks to you all, i am not going to fail miserably. it's already majorly improved.

i knew i was coming for help to the right bunch. you all KNOW crappy graphics!

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nicko

nimmot

see, i can give good advice and not just pertaining to digging holes or pouring concrete.

Ve.

Ooooo nicko...that looks much better! :happy:

mick

i see so many things i hadn't been able to see before. what i thought was light artifact next to the seawall is a sail on a mast, and there's an anchor thrown over the seawall with the skiff tied up to it.

what i thought was water on the left bottom of the pic is beach..

i can see the mail house on the end of the wharf.

i can see the "rescue" canoes trailing after the Rex. i can see more of the Rex behind the ferry raft that it's hogged to. i can see the shapes of the fishing boats, and the rafts tied to the wharf.




nicko..... you did something else besides the reducing the dpi. how did you smooth out the colour and lighten it? i played around, and didn't get anything as nice as you did.

i rescanned at 2400 dpi then reduced to 200 and 100 dpi (2 pics)



i'm just flabbergasted.

x


http://homepage.mac.com/m1ck/.Pictures/wharf pix/2400_dpi_to_100

http://homepage.mac.com/m1ck/.Pictures/wharf pix/2400_dpi_to_200

mondo

There's a plugin for Photoshop...I can't remember the name, it'll have to wait until I get home and crack open the powerbook (for the first time in I-don't-know-how-long)...anyway, it allows you to choose between various types of interpolation when enlarging a low-res image, some of which produce surprisingly good results. The smoothing effect is somewhat like a mild posterisation if the original file has a lot of noise. Umm...I'll try it out later on, that's probably the smartest thing for me to do. I remember once having to use it translate a VGA sequence to HD when the boss had told a client "of course all our animations are available in any resolution" despite my anxious gestures to the contrary in the background; it wasn't true High Definition, but the client didn't have any issues with it.

*makes mental note*

nicko

mick, I did adjust the levels a little...

If you want a higher res pic then reduce the 2400 dpi scan to 300. That was the nugget of info I managed to leave out of my post yesterday

mick

i don't suppose you recall what settings you used?
i was here earlier, and read what you wrote about 2400 >300 dpi

so i got on my bike
and i rode 8 km to the school and broke in to use their scanner. (j/k i have a key).

the computer that is hooked to the scanner is a PPC 6500 i fixed and donated to them. it has a floppy drive and an internal zip drive. zip disks only hold 100 MB. scanning at 2400 made a nearly 500 MB file. the computer nearly choked to death, and i had to use PS 3 to reduce it to 300 dpi so i could transfer it to my external zip drive at home.

i'm just sayin'... i am done scanning, i think.

http://homepage.mac.com/m1ck/.Pictures/wharf pix/2400_300

i may be able to pull this off after all.

i don't know how to thank all of you enough for how far you've gotten me. i was foolish to take it on sight unseen, and that's another lesson learned.


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nicko

ha ha...

no I don't remember. I was just fooling around to get to what I got to

Meska

Check this out.

Dust and Scrathes at the minimum setting to blow out the dot, and sharpen edges (but faded back) to draw the detailed edge back, lighten using Curves, and resized to 150dpi. I agree with hires scan and using this process it will elimanate the screening. This took me about 2 minutes, but you could invest more time on concentrating on areas that don't work so well.

mick

cool meska that brought a lot of definition to the upper pic, especially, and the whole thing looks cleaner..

i'm just learning about curves adjustments; heh.. i was feeling "pro" when i figured out the levels sliders.

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mick

but then, nicko IS a very handsome man.

nicko

:surprised: :happy:

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mick

ok you people.

look where you've taken me. (all improvements are credited to my advisors. all crap and bad work is solely my own.)










Tiff


i'll take any and all criticism, please. i already can see that i've got to rough up the edges of the "paper" frame.



golly, you are a fine bunch of pixel wrestlers.

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mondo

mick asked me to post this...it's like I said: felt-tip pen is the way to go. I am always buying new notebooks and promising myself I'm going to draw more than one picture in them, so now I've got to do another. I did this on the last page in case it didn't work out...pff...I should just draw stuff and stop being such a hand-wringer over everything.

Actual size, but there's a much larger version if mick wants:



I sort of rearranged a couple of things to sex up the Rex and...er, no, it was really to cover up mistakes. :awkward:

nicko

nice ketch duder!

nice sketch duder!


[hide]little nautical joke for you land lubbers :happy:[/hide]

squapple

Yeah, nice sketch mondo. I wanna see more !

The F Word

@mick-looks great, nice job
@mondo-Nice!

mick

mondo. i am definitely going to print that, my friend. again.. i would love to have the best quality file you can upload.. please, though.. do sign it? i think it's wonderful, and i'm really pleased and grateful.



thank you, orsonomio. like i said.. all improvements are ^ their fault. *nod*

i'm pretty amazed.

mick

final/as good as i can get it.

you are my heroes.

x

mick

the sketch that mondo did (he sent me a big one) is going to be framed and placed in a prominent position in our little island museum. thank you again, mondo.

the pics i "fixed" with your help are going to be the front page of a brochure about the island's dependence on water traffic, as part of our bid to get the wharf restored and operational again one day soon.

sweet.