help with how-to photo manipulation

virraszto · 08-11-2007

I just found this forum and I hope someone can give me some advice. I have an old family portrait taken of my great-great-grandmother, her daughter and my grandmother. Problem is, it's a digital photo of the actual photo. I was able to take several digital photos of it, but each one of them has a flash mark in it, in different places. I am trying to crop out the good parts to make a complete photo with no flash mark. I'm not having much luck. I am not very experienced in doing something like this. Does anyone have any advice on how to do it? I'll never get an actual copy of the photo, so this is all I'll ever have and it's important for me to get it fixed right to eventually print and frame.

Thank you.

virraszto

**tamlin** · 08-11-2007

Can you post examples? If the flash reflection is in a different area on different photos but the angle of the shots is similar my first suggestion would be to load two images into Photoshop and then use the Clone Tool to transfer pixels from one to the other, but it's difficult to advise without seeing the originals.

virraszto · 08-11-2007

Here are two of them. I took 8 photos but only uploaded two of them.

Thanks!
virraszto

ps. I shot them at a high resolution, so I had to reduce them quite a bit to upload them to my picturetrail acct.

Also, I tried to crop out the good part in one and paste it to the other, but the coloring is way off and it looks terrible. I don't have photoshop. I was using micrografx publisher.

**tamlin** · 08-11-2007

Ah well, without Photoshop it would be a bit of a struggle!

OK, I might be able to fix this for you. I'll send you a PM.

virraszto · 08-11-2007

Thanks so much! I tried to reply to your pm, but I couldn't see a reply button. I emailed you.

**tamlin** · 08-11-2007

OK, I've done the best I could. It was a little more complex than I first thought. The angles of the shots and the sizes of the images were slightly different, so it was not possible to clone directly from one to another. So, very briefly, here's what I did.

Used the Lens Correction filter to straighten up each image as much as possible.
Chose two images where the flash reflections were as far apart as possible, then picked the smaller one to be the "master image".
Used the Ruler Tool to measure the distance between two set points in the "master image", then measured the same distance in the other image. From these measurements I could then work out the percentage reduction required to make the important elements in the two images the same size.
Used Image Size to reduce the second image by the calculated percentage.
Dragged the resized second image into the "master image" as a new layer.
Reduced the opacity of the new layer to 50% and moved it around until it was aligned as closely as possible to the "master image".
Used the Warp tool to make a few final adjustments, then set the opacity back to 100%.
Added a "hide all" layer mask to the new layer, then painted on the layer mask with white over the area of the flash reflection, which restored the missing part of the image by revealing the corresponding part from the upper layer.
Once all the flash reflection had been successfully covered, I stamped all visible layers to a new layer and added a Curves adjustment layer to even-out the contrast.
Finally, tidied-up some of the scratches and spots with the Healing Brush and cropped the image to size.

Here's a reduced-size version of the result:

I've emailed the full-size version to you.

virraszto · 08-11-2007

As I said in my email to you..........OMG what a great job! Unbelievable!! It looks wonderful!!

Thank you so much!

Did you use photoshop? I am seriously considering getting some good software to learn how to do this!

**tamlin** · 08-11-2007

Yes, it was done in Photoshop CS3.

Mishelly · 08-12-2007

thats an amaizing job you did with that

stevieg · 08-12-2007

Man, what a great job. You never cease to amaze me, I would never have thought to use all those steps you used to do this. I'm saving this as a tut. Thanks for another lesson.

**tamlin** · 08-12-2007

Thanks stevie - I included the description of how I did it as I thought it might come in useful for other people.

Mullinix · 09-06-2007

Yes, I agree, great job. I also will be saving the steps you used.

Jumbosia · 09-22-2007

Tamlin, you are great! I want to thank you for your explanation how to do this. I think that there are many members (including me) that can need this.
THANK YOU!

Gjbphp · 09-22-2007

Really good job Tamlin, I can use something like this on some really old photos and plates that I have.

Sophiapax3 · 01-04-2008

Hi!

I am in the process of archiving my family photos. The best way to deal with them is not to photograph them, but to scan them in. If you scan them in they will be saved as a graphic file. If your present print cannot scan and you plan to work with lots of your family photos, consider buying and all in one printer. They are so cheap now. The printers come with basic programs that will allow you to do basic touch ups like getting rid of red eye or getting rid of scratches and to catogorize your photos. Once you have them on your computer, you can mail copies to relatives, use them for Xmas cards, etc.