Expert: LizaL - 5/10/2005

Question
Hi, The link below shows my problem.

I would like to bring out the names on this War Memorial photo.

I have Photoshop CS

http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/rhardy/

Thanks for any help you may give me.

Ray

Answer
Hi Raymond,

You've REALLY got your work cut out for you with this image. I could see this taking literally hours to fix.

I'm going to trust that you have Photoshop experience here, and throw out some general tips and ideas. I can't sit and do the whole thing and record it and post the movie online, but hopefully I can give you some pointers to work with. I've used the techniques that I describe to a small degree just to give you an idea of what you could do.

• I'd use Shadow and Highlight (Image pulldown menu, Adjustments > Shadow/Highlight) to adjust the overall tonality of the image. Then I'd use Replace Color (Image pulldown menu, Adjustments > Replace Color) to take away as much of the moldy green hue as I could. Try to make the whole image as neutral as possible.

• After that, I'd use the Healing Brush and the Patch Tool to clear up as much of the imperfections on the stone as I could.

• Then I think I'd use Curves (Image pulldown menu > Adjustments > Curves) to bring out the type from the background of the stone. What's good about using Curves, especially in this case, is that you can isolate different parts of the image and adjust their contrast, rather than affect the whole picture, as you would with Levels. The lighting and background look different on the right side, than on the left -- so using Curves gives you the advantage of isolating the two different sides of the picture.

• After Curves, you might also use Levels (Image pulldown menu, Adjustments > Levels) to clip the highlights and shadows. This is done by opening the Levels dialog box, then, with the image open, holding down Shift + Command (on a Mac; or Shift + Alt on PC), and dragging the highlight slider toward the center (to clip the highlights), and holding down the same keys and dragging the shadows slider toward the center.

You might also try using Levels directly - that is, just dragging the highlight and shadow sliders without clipping.

• You might also toy with the overall Brightness and Contrast controls, and also Color Balance (both found under the Image pulldown menu, under Adjustments) to remove the cast and reddish tint from the image. Also, a Gaussian blur filter or the Dust and Scratches filter will remove some imperfections. These are both found under the Filter pulldown menu, with Gaussian Blur under the Blur submenu, and Dust and Scratches under the Noise submenu.

And you might also find that you need to go back and redo these techniques several times in order to get good results. Make sure you take snapshots (from your Layers palette) as you progress. Then you can always go back to a previous version.

I put together some of these techniques in several small movies -- I tried doing a large movie and it came out to be 32MB! Anyway, check these out:
http://little-works.com/all_experts/

All the little movies there show quick techniques, some of which I've described above.

But there's no doubt about it, this picture has a LOT of work to be done. It's REALLY in bad shape, but try what I've suggested and see what you come up with. What I've done here is very down and dirty, just to give you an idea of some of the tools you could use to try and fix the photo. But make no mistake -- this would take me hours to fix, and I'm not sure I could fix it completely, even at that. And I do professional retouching!

As I said, I'm going on the assumption that you have Photoshop experience -- but in the event that you don't, please post back and I'll try and explain things further.

Lisa