Getting to know a photo, one pixel at a time..

Morning all,

I've been away from the nattering for a few days.. been busy with a little photo reconstruction. The silver had disintegrated in places and there were a few crease marks. It's very tedious work requiring lots of man hours, and when I started, I had no idea how to do it..

This is the original photo, from C1948 ish..




..and this is what I done did with a week of messing around.. I suppose about 15-20 hours all told..




I know it's not perfect, but as a first attempt I don't think I did too bad. There are probably easier ways of doing it, but I basically blew it up to 400% on screen from an original scan size of 2036x1526 and painted in all (most of) the missing pixels by hand. I used a 3x3 pixel brush set to either 1% or 3% opacity depending on whether it was a dark or light area and just added a bit at a time until the missing areas matched (or as close as possible) the surrounding pixels. I altered the contrast selectively in a couple of areas afterwards. One thing I forgot to do with this example before posting is to greyscale it, which I'll do later. It was scanned on a colour scanner and in places there are hints of reds, blues and yellows where there shouldn't be.

I now know why this sort of work is so expensive to get done, judging by the time involved.

Now I'm going to get the gear ready for a trip to.. maybe South Wales, hopefully there's still some snow.. and try for the buzzard pictures that I didn't get a fortnight ago. I'll probably use the 300 prime on a couple of 2x converters (an 1800 lens.. ) and see what happens.

Still, before that, I really ought to get dressed.

Cheers

Liam

You've done a good job, although the time taken must have been excruciating...I would not have the patience to even think about it.

Now Sue is brilliant at things like this, and the last restoration she did took her about 35 minutes....incredible.....However, she did not go to pixel level, so that makes a major difference.

Hi John,

thanks.. when I do another it will take a lot less time, as it was mainly trial and error to find out which technique worked best. I've got a colour one to do, but there is a lot less damage although the areas are bigger. I think that'll be cutting and pasting similar areas in the main, and a little detailing elsewhere in the busier parts of the image. All good fun. It is excruciating though, but when you get a decent sized chunk done and compare it to the original, which I had side by side throughout, it keeps you going. The sense of acheivement with anything like this is the reward at the end.

I won't be doing too many though, hopefully.

Cheers

Liam

I too think you've done a great job. The time is a lot but if the subject is important to you it's well worth it.