Re: [Gimp-user] Trying to remove fading from old b&w photo

[Joel Rees <joel rees gmail com>]

Hmm.

On Wed, Nov 23, 2016 at 1:52 AM, Denzo <forums gimpusers com> wrote:
> > Sending questions to notifications@ is not necessary. :/

I said that, and now I go take a look at gimpusers.com, and I can't tell what
notifications gimpusers com means. It may be an address that the
gimpusers.com forum automatically adds to posts from their web UI. So,
until I find out more about that, mea culpa. It was advice I shouldn't
have been giving.

> > [...]
> > Every edit you make to an image removes or alters some of the original
> > information in the image. That means that, if the image is important,
> > it's far better to rescan the image with a different light setting
> > than to try to "fix" it.
> >
> > That is to say, if keeping the information in the image is important,
> > it's better to re-scan it or take another photo with a different light
> > source/setting.
> >
> > On the other hand, if your intent is primarily artistic instead, you
> > may well prefer the effects of editing.
>
> In the photo I was working on the photo was so poor in places that I couldn't
> actually see much detail - so not a lot to lose. My restoration attempt isn't
> perfect but I think looks far better. It's to be used in a family ancestry book.
> Before and after pics attached.

Looks like you're having fun, and you've managed to clear quite a bit
of the fading. And the effective focus is improved around the face and
hands. But you've lost a lot of detail in their clothing.

Looking at the man in the middle, in the back -- in the original, I
can see the suit jacket. In your edited version, he is wearing
something black.

That detail usually can't be brought back out with further editing. I
haven't pulled your trial_3 image off the forum to check, but I'm
betting that will be the case here, too.

So, unless you're rather sure that you (and your children's children?)
won't be interested in the style of clothing, etc., in the future, you
probably want to keep the original photo and the original scan, if you
have a place to keep the photo and media for the scan.

My files are rather disorganized, but I tend to keep a lot of
intermediate copies around as long as I have room for them.

Organizing files is still a problem I have not solved to my
satisfaction, after forty years playing with computers. And the
organization of our backups also affects whether our descendants will
be able to access the information in the future, so I really should
solve that problem. :-/

One suggestion I might make is to include the original scans with the
book, especially if you plan to distribute the book in digital form.

I'm by no means an expert, but, so far, the only thing I have been
able to find to help that kind of fading is careful and time-consuming
use of various selection tools as I gradually apply the other tools
I'm using to try to bring back the original colors (shades of black,
in this case) -- equivalent, I think, to dark-room techniques
involving graduated exposure. It looks like that may be something like
what you've done.

I think that there is software in existence that semi-intelligently
figures out where the fading is and semi-intelligently cleans it up
with semi-success that may or may not improve on what you can do by
hand for a particular case. I have not been able to find such tools in
the commonly accessible tools for the gimp (or for the commercial
editing software, for that matter).

If anyone has further input on that, I'm sure many of us would be interested.

> (I have a basic scanner and need to learn about
> scanning with different light settings which I didn't actually know existed).

Unless things have changed in the last few years, a cheap scanners'
settings generally don't alter the light source itself, just apply
digital editing before they save the image. The editing functions that
the manufacturer supplies may or may not be customized to the
hardware, so they may actually be useful, or they may just be losing
you information from the start.

Which is the case for your scan settings on your scanner is something
you'll have to figure out. I usually just take the rawest settings I
can figure out so that I can control the editing myself, particularly
if I'm using a scanner that I'm not familiar with.

Professional scanners may allow you to adjust the light sources, and
also provide you with custom software, some of which actually can be
used to improve what the hardware gives you.

But, as I said, I am definitely not an expert with this stuff.

> Many thanks for your input!
>
> Attachments:
> * http://www.gimpusers.com/system/attachments/337/original/MAY_family_400dpi.jpg
> * http://www.gimpusers.com/system/attachments/338/original/MAY_family_trial_3.jpg

-- 
Joel Rees

I'm imagining I'm a novelist:
http://joels-random-eikaiwa.blogspot.com/2016/11/simplife01-1-meet-the-pilots.html