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Time Lapse Video of Restoring Old Photos

amirm

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Photoshop experts are mesmerizing in how they do their work, in this case, a sped up session:


The tools being used are clone brush which takes pixels from another nearby area and place it where the mouse click is, and "healing brush" which does the same thing but attempts to blend it into adjacent pixels. These tools perform miracles but can also have horrible artifacts or misfires. So lots of skill is required to use them for large amount of retouching as it is being used.

Another tool which can be considered a "cheat" used here is to use the right arm, reverse and resize it and place it over the left, damaged arm! This is a restoration technique used often in wildlife photography. It is kind of bothersome to me and I have not resorted to it but is the only method to synthesize missing parts (e.g. chopping off part of a bird wing).

Anyway, it is just fun watching it even if you are not interested in understanding what is done. May want to turn it down a bit as the music is a bit annoying.
 

Blumlein 88

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Here is another example with better music and another tool (patch tool with content aware fill):


Isn't digital technology amazing?

Yes it is. Even more so, I did a photo very much like that one only with more damage. It looks as far as anyone can tell perfectly normal. So rest of the story about digital technology's amazingness is not just that something like that is possible. It is possible for someone like me with no incredibly special skills. Just some motivation and a little practiced patience.

The photo I did was the only known photo of a relative's parent's wedding. Groom was a naval officer who married the week before being shipped toward Europe in WWII. The photo was filled with cracks like the one in the video only more of them. I probably spent around 12 hours doing the repair perhaps more. Over a couple weeks time. The photo was of the bride and groom cutting a fancy cake at the reception with bridesmaids all around. It was tedious to do. So I worked on it a little at a time. It seemed hopeless in the beginning.

A lucky thing was a local newpaper announcement of the wedding had a highly detailed description of the reception and was cut out to be put with the photo. Included hair colors, dress colors and textures. So I spent an additional 20 hrs colorizing it. Not hard to find a copy of the naval uniform for reference. The rest was something of a guesswork and is only plausible not necessarily correct. One funny thing was the minister's tie. I don't know why, only knew the suit color, but not tie color. I used a surprisingly bright yellow with purple pattern. It somehow looked right. The minister's wife was still alive and lived nearby. I gave her a copy also as her husband was no longer alive. She said she did not remember any color photos. I explained about colorizing it. She pondered that a minute and said, "but how did you know about his tie, who told you?". It turns out she remembered the tie because it was a vivid yellow and purple tie she disliked, but he always used it for wedding ceremonies. So I must be psychic or something right? Of course she then informed me his eyes were blue not green. He was described as having brown hair, and a lighter eye tint made me think he would have green eyes. So I fixed that and printed new copies. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don't. The technology for that is amazing.
 
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