[Gimp-user] how to darken bright areas

[paulhurm <forums gimpusers com>]

I have several hundred World War One era photographs I am working with that my
grandfather took during his service with the Army Medical Corps. I have no
negatives so I am working with nearly 100 year old B&W prints. I have scanned
all of these but my scans have problems, one major is discussed here with the
hope of getting some suggestions.

Many of these prints have undergone “silver creep” where the silver particles
have migrated through the emulsion. Of course, these places have lost at least
some of the detail that was there. When looking at the prints, these areas
appear dark but if held at the right angle light will reflect off of them and
they appear bright. When scanned these areas mostly appear white and are
annoying to look and detract the eye away from what detail remains.

My goal for this post is to ask for ideas on how to darken these light areas so
they are less distractive. I know there is no hope of recovering detail but if
these light areas could be darkened I think it would greatly improve the view.

The example I hope to attach shows the problem quite well. Around the top and
right side in particular you should see the problem. When the photo is zoomed in
on these areas you can actually see what almost look like bubbles or clumps of
silver.

Here is my current thinking as to one approach to darken these areas. A year or
so ago I achieved partial success but my notes were one of the things that I
could not recover after a hard disk crash. Also, my memory is shot so I am
starting from scratch.

I am asking for help on what steps to take to achieve the following again.

1 – At one point I was able to get most of the bright spots isolated and on a
separate layer. I had just the spots isolated but can’t recall how. I think I
might have been messing with luminosity and I think had used an add-in but no
clue now.

2 – My plan was to then turn the separated spots dark instead of light. I was
then going to work with layers, put the spot layer underneath and adjust
transparency of the upper layer to try to blend them together. Is this a
reasonable idea?

I have a lot of learning to do so as much detail as possible on suggested
processes will be appreciated. I will also have to learn how to handle
transparency layers for step 2 but I think I can figure that out without too
much trouble.

Again, any thoughts about this process overall will be greatly appreciated. Will
my thoughts work? Is there a much better way? Any suggestions on add-ins to try,
etc.

You can get a little better feel for the overall project and see some additional
photographs at any of the below sites.

Thank you very much for any help!!!

Paul Hurm
paulhurm gmail com

http://typicalfrenchkiddies.tumblr.com/

https://www.facebook.com/TypicalFrenchKiddies

http://www.typicalfrenchkiddies.com/
No photos on this site but the Introduction may be of interest.


Attachments:
* http://www.gimpusers.com/system/attachments/431/original/p48_TEST_GRAY.tif

-- 
paulhurm (via www.gimpusers.com/forums)