reducing the "old look" in old photographs?

[Daniel Buck]

I have had a request to take the 'old' look out of some old photographs, I only (for now) have the low-res scans (I cropped this one, to take the person out of the photograph while posting on the web), this is the resolution I was given (though I'm going to see if they have higher resolution scans).

1st is the original, 2nd is my attemt to reduce the 'old' look. Basically, all I have done is adjusted the white balance, adjusted the contrast, and then a slight bit of contrast enhancement.

Anyone ever done this before? have any tips? Feel free to take a shot at the original, but if you do come up with some good results, could you explain your process a bit? :)

They are happy with the results as is (there are other images as well), but I'm not to happy with it myself.

Thanks!


http://www.danielbuck.net/wip/old_1.jpg


http://www.danielbuck.net/wip/old_2.jpg

[Todd Spoth]

i dont know i can offer any tips without actually trying it myself, but the second one looks like an amatuer went into photoshop and tweaked the saturation was too much. the first is still more appealing to me.

[Daniel Buck]

regardless if the original looks better, the goal is to make it not look old :) Saturation might be to much, I'll mark that down to change :-) Just trying to get away from the lifeless dingy original :)

i dont know i can offer any tips without actually trying it myself
care to try it for yourself? Otherwise, your post wasn't very helpful :)

The original image is provided, cropped the person out of the picture, but not resized. This is how tall the original image is, all I have to work with for now.

[Todd Spoth]

ill give it a try in the morning.

[John Thawley]

Daniel:

I think the challenge is probably not one of Photoshop... I think you're in a situation of finding what's in the customer's head. Obviously, you possess the skills to modernize the image... but the challenge of locating the fantasy that lies within the mind of the client is a moving target.

To me, it seems you hit the mark. He wants these to look like new photos. Saturation, sharpness... pretty much all you can do. I don't think it looks amateurish. The original is amateur. You can't do much about that. The only thing that jumped out at me was the black in the tire has picked up some or the red tint from the saturation.

Good luck and make sure we get to see others. It is an interesting request if nothing else. :)

JT

[Austin Langley]

To fix something like this you need to first figure out what happened with the old photo that makes it look dated. This seems to be an overall warm cast, low contrast, and soft edges. Not to mention flat colors. There may be more things but i'm not sure what. First thing i'd do is determine the offending color cast and take it out.

Here's what i came up with.

http://homepage.mac.com/austinlangley/.Pictures/Myspace%20Photos/al_old_1.jpg

[Daniel Buck]

are you desaturating the blues?

[Jeff Boerio]

Daniel:

To me, it seems you hit the mark. He wants these to look like new photos. Saturation, sharpness... pretty much all you can do. I don't think it looks amateurish. The original is amateur. You can't do much about that. The only thing that jumped out at me was the black in the tire has picked up some or the red tint from the saturation.

JT

I noticed this, too. It looks like there was a hint of red in the original picture, too, probably from aging. Might need to mask the wheel/tire in a different layer and go to work on the colors there.

I like how the chrome trim rings popped out from the old to the new.

- Jeff

[Austin Langley]

are you desaturating the blues?
Basically. I used selective to take out the blue tones. I figure the road is a grey/black color although if it was in the shadow at the right time of day it could have been blue (but I'll get into that later).

Another problem i noticed was the amount of film grain present in the original. I don't remember how to deal with that offhand, but I'll look into it.

[Daniel Buck]

ill give it a try in the morning.
any luck? :)

[Daniel Buck]

a bump for Todd! was it to challenging? or did you just not get around to it? :)

[Antonio Donatelli]

Sorry for necroposting, but did you ever try any of the ROC plugins with any scanning software? Nikon has it in their scanners, it's available for Silverfast and via Kodak/ASF. ROC stands for something like "Restore Old Color", they seem to do a really great job, and some of the plugins offer a lot of control with a great starting point.

[Daniel Buck]

that project has gone away, but thanks for your input :-) In an ideal situation, I'd be scanning them in myself I think. I haven't ever used any ROC before, I'll have to give that a shot if I ever do something like this again :-)

My epson has some sort of color restoration, but I have only scanned in black and white stuff so far. I'll have to give it a shot on some old photographs and see how it does!