Experiment 02 -- Repair & Colorize

[photoken]

OK!

It's time to start another Experiment. This one was suggested by Herbert123, and here's the link to the original message which contains a link to a high-resolution image we can use:
http://www.pl32.com/forum3/viewtopic.ph ... =15#p32918

Untitled.jpg

This one will be challenging for me -- I'm confident about repairing and enhancing the image, but colorizing has always been a very weak point here....

Let's have some fun!

[photoken]

Well, repairing this is going to take a looooong time.

I used the Gray Mixer to convert the image to B&W, then opened a new window so I could tile the two windows: one at Full View (39%) and the other at 400%. I worked on the 400% window using the Remove Brush -- 2px with a softness of about 75%. Just doing this small section of the upper left corner:

r&c upper l 01.png

took about 1 hour. (!)

Although the damage is nowhere near as severe as in some images I've seen, the sheer quantity of the damaged areas means that it will probably take somewhere around 40 hours to finish the repair portion of the Experiment. Well, at least it's good therapy....

Judgments have to be made constantly: What is damage, and what is legitimate image data (the objects, the texture of the wallpaper, etc.). Many times I was using the Remove Brush to actually draw in missing image data.

[greenmorpher]

Why not use Menu Bar > Filter > Quality > Remove Dust/Scratches at an appropriate setting for a first pass, Ken?

40 hours of filling in tiny holes sounds to me like self-flagellation with lengths of razor wire! LOL

Cheers, Geoff

[photoken]

Why not use Menu Bar > Filter > Quality > Remove Dust/Scratches at an appropriate setting for a first pass, Ken?

The first things I tested were Adaptive Soften, Remove Dust/Scratches, and Remove Dirt. At a strength to be useful, they soften the details of the image too much for my liking. The Minimum filter looked like it had potential, but still left so many areas needing hand work with the Remove Brush that it seemed pointless to use the Minimum filter -- I would still have to go over every square millimeter by hand, anyway.

I've seen a whole lot of examples of photo restoration on the Web, and one of my pet peeves is that they invariably look phony -- too blurry and/or too evenly smoothed out. It's just my personal bias, but what I always want to achieve is to retain image details, textures and even the film grain so the photo looks like it's never been touched. If I can do that, then after the fact I can always blur it if that's the look the customer wants.

Here's the (un-retouched) area I looked at when testing (image at 39%):

texture area.png

I really like the textures there: the stamped, corrugated and welded feeder tube, the differences in texture between the paper cone and the wood panel behind it. To me, those are the things that really give life to the photo and I want to retain that life as much as I can.

[greenmorpher]

I can see where you are coming from, Ken, but I'm afraid I can see where you are going to! Make sure you computer is open on the forum when the men in the white coats come to get you and have a note to hand asking them to please post the address of the care center (aka asylum) so we can all come and visit you! LOL.

I will watch developments with interest!

Cheers, Geoff

[Herbert123]

I will have time later this week, and work on this as well.

[greenmorpher]

I would like to try too, but I don't have enough bandwidth on my wireless dongle to download the file so I will watch!

Cheers, Geoff

[dutchman]

Let's make me the first try.
I first transformed it to a B/W pic.
The backwall I left mostly untouched.
The dots and dirts I removed with the copy and healing brush.
The machines became a "fresher/darker" color and the aluminum "pipes" became a shiny touch.
I've tried to give the ladies dress a not toooo modern color.
After colorizing I gave the whole a light vignetting.

@Ken:
I don't have THAT MUCH (40hours) time to spend with the pic.
And for therapy I usualy visit my psychisian.

[photoken]

One of the difficulties with colorizing a B&W image is retaining the value range and details of the image.

Those values and details can nicely be retained by using the False Color adjustment. However, it's often necessary to further modify the colour adjustment with Curves, and even Hue/Saturation. When multiple areas need colorizing, the Layers palette can get very complex and tedious to maintain.

The solution is to create an adjustment "holding" layer (as used by the RAW image processing). Here's how to do it:

1. After converting the image to B&W (if necessary), add a new image layer -- specifying "Gray" (8-bit or more) and using white as the colour.
2. For that newly created image layer, open the Adjustment Layer panel and add as many adjustment layers as you wish.
3. On the original image layer, use one of the selection tools (the Automatic Lasso works great for this) to select the target area and create a mask for the "holding" adjustment layer.

The beauty of this approach is that you can save your Adjustment layer settings as a preset and instantly apply all the adjustments to any other image. For starters, here's a preset of adjustments I'm using for this Experiment:

Colorization.zip

Now, for colorizing another area, simply duplicate the Adjustment "Holding" Layer, delete its mask, create a new mask for the targeted area, and adjust the Hue of the False Color adjustment.

Here's a quick example:

colorization test 01.jpg

The Layers panel and the Adjustments panel:

colorization test layers & adjustments.png

[dutchman]

Hi Ken,
thank you very much for your explanation.
I think your technique is a beauty for further colorization pics.
There are an increddible lot of approaches to achieve the result.
I didn't take the "false color", but I layered the image complete for every single item I colored.
These layers became a color hue/sat and further common adjustments like blending modes.

A short piece of my layers you can see here:

granny_layers_768.jpg

[dutchman]

Hi Ken,
so now I've followed your suggestion and YES, very nice. Thanks!

[photoken]

Hi Toni,
Glad you liked the suggestion. You are right -- there are many ways to do stuff in PhotoLine!