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Messages - Mike Morrell

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1
Free Photo Restoration & Date Old Photographs / Re: Image restoration help please.
« on: Sunday 05 November 17 14:40 GMT (UK)  »
Restoring photos with biro scribbled across faces/eyes is a difficult challenge, at least for me. I hope the faces in my attempt are still recognizable at a distance but I haven't been able to restore the original quality of the faces, at least not without spending much more time on it. Feel free to improve on this!

I started learning about photo restoration about 6 months back - with a lot of help from other restorers here. I don't have much time for it at the moment but I'm sure I'll pick it up again soon.

There's a Rootschat 'how to' subforum with useful tips and links at http://www.rootschat.com/forum/resources-tips-tutorials/. It's also a good place to post any questions you have.

You can find (via Google) some useful video's on Youtube that show basic restoration techniques (patching, cloning, scratch/spot removal, etc.).

If you're willing to pay for tutorials, take a look at what Lynda.com has to offer: https://www.lynda.com/Restoration-training-tutorials/1358-0.html?previousCategory=70
You can subscribe to Lynda.com on a monthly basis.

There also some books (and e-books) on restoration. One of the most comprehensive is 'Digital Restoration from Start to Finish' by Ctein. It's 450 page step-by-step guide on pretty much all aspects of photo restoration. The author is a professional restorer and he/she goes into some 'advanced techniques' using selections, masks, filters, etc. to minimize the 'manual work'. It's probably best to be comfortable using the basic techniques before delving into the advanced ones!

But there's no substitute for 'learning by doing'. And for looking at the great results here and figuring out how they were achieved - and by asking the restorers. Different restorers work in different ways and most types of damage can be corrected using different tools. So there's never just one way of restoring a photo. It's good to try out different tools and learn what works best for in each situation.

While learning how to restore photos, I also learned a whole more about how to use Photoshop too!

Good luck!
Mike









2
Technical Help / Re: Hackers - more prolific than ever it would appear
« on: Thursday 02 November 17 16:59 GMT (UK)  »
Mike in Cumbria makes a good point. During the past weeks, Microsoft have been rolling out a major update to Windows 10 (The 'Fall Creators update'). The update is completely automatic and the first part of the process seems to be done in the background so you wouldn't even know it was happening. During the later parts, users are asked too sit back and wait while the PC is updated and restarted a few times. If this update didn't go as planned, it could result in apparent 'data loss'. This happened to someone I do voluntary work for. Something went awry and he's basically got a 'clean PC'. His programs and data (which wasn't much) have disappeared.

Your computer could have been physically wiped clean by a hacker but it's quite possible that your data is still physically on the hard drive, just not accessible via windows (or whatever). There are IT companies that can check what's on the disc with special programs and try to restore as much as possible (for a fee). Some companies even specialise in recovering 'lost' data. I've no idea what they would charge but it's worth checking out. In the meantime - since it seems you're being targeted -  I would avoid using the internet via your PC. The less it's 'interfered with', the better the chance of restoring the lost data.

I do wonder what the 'payoff' is for the hacker unless it's someone (working for someone) you know and have offended in some way. Malice could then be the reason for targeting you. Normally, hackers want something of value, either by demanding a ransom to get your data back or by collecting and selling e-mail addresses, bank details, etc. The only reasons I can think of to alert you to the intrusion by wiping your PC is either a future ransom demand or just plain malice.

However much data you're able to recover, the very first thing to do (off-line) is to make a copy to a memory stick/external drive. The second thing is (with advice from the people who recovered your data) is to beef up your on-line protection with something like Norton or Avast. Also change the passwords for your modem/router and check that the security settings are OK. Your internet provider should be able to help you do this.
The third thing to do is to completely scan your PC for 'Malware' which might have already been put there. You could also ask the IT-company who helps you recover any data to do this first. Don't forget to scan the external copy of the data too.

The last thing to do is to set up a backup schedule either to an external drive or to somewhere in the cloud (using something like backblaze). If you data is valuable and not backed up on an ancestry site, I'd recommend regular backups both to an external drive and to the cloud. Then whatever happens to one of them, you always have the other.

Mike

3
Technical Help / Re: Outlook/Hotmail Acting Strangely!
« on: Tuesday 31 October 17 12:46 GMT (UK)  »
The 'good news' is that many others have had the same problem. So it's not specific to your account or PC. Microsoft has acknowledged that Outlook/Hotmail had problems in September but people were still reporting problems in October.

Browse through the discussions and various 'solutions' on these two threads:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/oemail-osend/duplicate-emails-appeaing-in-drafts-and-then-in/708a243d-a01d-4e04-b651-736c2ca82107
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/oemail-osend/unable-to-send-email-multiple-copies-in-draft/e86dfedb-9b5b-45be-943f-f64442fdbd22

A couple of people suspect it's something to do with using the 'Avast' security software. Don't know if you do. The suggestion in the 2nd thread to clear browsing history, caches, cookies, etc. is sensible. It could be that - even if Microsoft has fixed the problem - your browser is still using 'old' settings which screw things up. It's also a good idea to try using Outlook with a different browser.

Hope this helps,

Mike


4
Technical Help / Re: Epson XP442 printer Copying/Printing in too large a font.
« on: Monday 30 October 17 18:21 GMT (UK)  »
I'm no expert on printers but it seems unlikely that your printer (when switched off/on) 'remembers' the previous text document settings (labels, font size) and applies these even when issued with new ones for a new print/copy job. I could be wrong.

If in doubt, look for a 'factory reset' option on the printer. Otherwise, print a new couple of lines in Word, setting the document size to A4 and the font size to 12 (or whatever). Text printing shouldn't normally interfere with copying/printing unless you're scanning/copying to a PC and printing from it (as a document or PDF) rather than as an image. In Word, set all print options back to 'normal' (A4), font 12 (or whatever), magnification 100%. When printing, check that all 'print' options such as document/image, magnification, etc. are all 'normal'.

In general, it's Windows (or a specific program) that remembers the previous settings rather than the printer which normally just does what the PC tells it to do.

Hope this helps,

Mike


5
Free Photo Restoration & Date Old Photographs / Re: Jacintha Jane Eburne headstone
« on: Friday 20 October 17 11:44 BST (UK)  »
Romans 12:12 fits perfectly!
Rootschatters never cease to amaze me :)
Mike

6
Free Photo Restoration & Date Old Photographs / Re: Eric and bill groves
« on: Thursday 12 October 17 10:22 BST (UK)  »
One from me.
Mike

7
Thanks Jen, I'll leave links to 'other references' to people who are less sloppy with them than I am ;)

Mike

The second link you gave is in Maryport  ;D

8

That's in Silloth, not Carlisle  :-\

Sorry, my mistake. I've removed the link.
Mike

9
Clean up and a bit of reconstruction but not much detail, unfortunately.

Mike

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