Jane Halsey

[Zanotti]

This is a photo of my Step Mother's great Aunt Jane taken on Jane's 93rd birthday. The photo was taken on August 10, 1888 - so she was born in 1795! Its not very often you have a photo of someone born in the 1700's.

Anyway, my limited PS skills make it difficult for me to clean it up. Its a small photo (maybe 4X6) that I have scanned into jpg format.

Can you guys help me? I would like to do this for my step mother's Christmas present.

Origional scan:

http://zanotti.smugmug.com/photos/232350332-O.jpg (http://zanotti.smugmug.com/gallery/3820988#232350332)


The back:

http://zanotti.smugmug.com/photos/232350349-L.jpg (http://zanotti.smugmug.com/gallery/3820988#232350349)

My guess is pulling this off here is as good as the quality gets. If anyone could try and help me improve it, I would appreciate it.

I debated putting this thread in people, technique, or finishing. If it needs to be moved, thank you.

Thanks to all,

Z

[Elaine]

Well, I won't be much help with processing/touch-ups, but I just had to say how cool it was to have such a photo! Amazing!

[Qarik]

I like the sepia formatting and the vignetting. A skin is a bit blown out though. There might be some dust on the sensor as well. Try a tripod next time. Was this taken with Nikon or Canon?

[schmoo]

Would this tutorial (http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1078429) help at all? I don't know... this photo of yours is so historic I don't think that giving it the kind of post-processing that we're used to in the 21st century would really do much. The qualities lie in the softness, her expression, the sepia tone.

What would you like to see done to this to make it better? :dunno

[Zanotti]

Would this tutorial (http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1078429) help at all? I don't know... this photo of yours is so historic I don't think that giving it the kind of post-processing that we're used to in the 21st century would really do much. The qualities lie in the softness, her expression, the sepia tone.

What would you like to see done to this to make it better? :dunno

I dont know much about the expression!

I guess if we could just generally clean the image, make the overexposed/missing areas a little more consistant, and just generally darken the blacks, that would be great.

I obviously think that the character of an older print needs to be maintained. When this type print was new, how would it have looked?

Z

[joshhuntnm]

i wil take a stab at this.

First, I'd ask about the scanning. if you didn't scan at high resolution--600 or more, I would start over with that.

Auto levels will remove the color cast and bring out the contrast a bit.

http://joshhunt.smugmug.com/photos/232381244-M.jpg

In my opionion, though, this does too much. I like it looking like an old photo.

If you make a copy and do this in a separate layer, you can change the opacity of the top layer to blend the two. This is 50% opacity in the top (auto leveled) layer

http://joshhunt.smugmug.com/photos/232381722-M.jpg

In this next one I did three more things
1. made another layer in between the first two and manually leveled it, pulling in both sides a bit.
2. apply the noise/ median filter. That gets rid of a few of the spots. It would be cleaner to go in and manually clone them out, but a LOT more time consuming
3. I also cropped it. it seems to bottom ads to the pic if it were all there.

http://joshhunt.smugmug.com/photos/232382900-M.jpg

I am not sure it is actualy all that much better. I feel like I am working on a precious antique. something to be said for leaving well enough alone.

[Icebear]

Wow. Really admirable job of cleaning up the photo while respecting its antiquity and character. I sure hope the original is well cared for, in acid free yadda, yadda. What a fabulous family heirloom. The way you put it is almost inconceivable - it's a photo of someone born in the 18th century, and here we are in the 21st!

[1pocket]

Wow. Really admirable job of cleaning up the photo while respecting its antiquity and character. I sure hope the original is well cared for, in acid free yadda, yadda. What a fabulous family heirloom. The way you put it is almost inconceivable - it's a photo of someone born in the 18th century, and here we are in the 21st!There is a rare book called The last men of the Revolution that was published I believe in the 1850's that is a collection of reminiscences -- and actual photographs -- of survivors from the US Revolutionary War! I got a peak in it; it is definitely spooky to realize these people go back that far:rutt

Incidentally, this is one of about 2000 rare photography books recently donated to the NH Institute of Art -- wow!

It's great that your family has that old photo, and they know who it is!

[imax]

Hey, Saw your post and thought I would give it a try. Not sure if this is what you were after but it's what I came up with. Took a couple of minutes

http://imax.smugmug.com/photos/232425687-L.jpg

Hve a great night

Joe

[Zanotti]

Many thanks to all, keep 'em coming!

Z

[JonMikal]

excellent work Josh.

[willw]

I like the minimal cleanup approach for this image. I'd leave it as close to the original as possible, even leave most of the yellow cast. Making it a pure B&W takes a lot out of the aged heirloom quality. I'd clean spots and boost contrast a bit, but leave it mostly alone. Seems to me it would be a great 8x10 (with appropriate frame) on a family wall.

[Phyxius]

Many thanks to all, keep 'em coming!

Z

I'm not a photoshop wiz, so here's my take on it.

I too love the old feel, so I cleaned up a couple blemishes, scratches and spots the showed up. I set a black point to bring some contrast and then lowered opacity to bring some of the color and brightness back. I added a hue/saturation level and brought back some color, upped the saturation a touch and lowered the brightness. I added a touch of contrast too.

Edit - I decided I could try something to bring some more contrast to her face and get rid of the almost blown area of her face/neck/hands. So I did another curves layer and set a black point on her left eye, lowered opacity and masked almost everything else.

http://phyxius.smugmug.com/photos/232915985-O.jpg

[Zanotti]

Very nicely done! Thank you!

[Zanotti]

I do want to thank everyone so much for the help and comments. The efforts are nothing short of amazing. You can tell that we all love photography and like to support each other!

I thought I would share my best attempt as well.


My step mother is thrilled with everyone's changes.

Z

PS: I have to go back and clean off some of the dust spots on the bottom. It s a time consuming task!

[Zanotti]

I cant seem to edit my own pics (?)

http://zanotti.smugmug.com/photos/232915246-O.jpg (http://zanotti.smugmug.com/gallery/3820988#232915246)

[PineapplePhoto]

I like the sepia formatting and the vignetting. A skin is a bit blown out though. There might be some dust on the sensor as well. Try a tripod next time. Was this taken with Nikon or Canon?

You are kidding right? :dunno

[rwdfresno]

Here is my stab at it. I opted for a minimalist approach to preserve as much detail as possible :

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2083/2116155912_b313eef9e0_b.jpg

[Jim89]

Had a small go at cleaning up the picture, sorry I couldn't do much with it.

http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/8021/woman1zr8.jpg