Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - McGroger

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 ... 326
1
Photograph Resources, Tips, Tutorials / Re: Newspaper images
« on: Monday 15 September 25 06:31 BST (UK)  »
Had a go at the second one, using similar methods as the first one, i.e., swapping between PSE and Topaz Photo AI, trying to get the best balance of retention of detail and smoothing that I could.
Peter

2
Photograph Resources, Tips, Tutorials / Re: Newspaper images
« on: Saturday 13 September 25 14:02 BST (UK)  »
Thanks, Zaph.

Sometimes you can get rid of the lines from newspaper images by running them through a Fast Fourier Tranform (FFT) filter. There’s one in the free app, “Image J”. Fortunately in this case it worked well. (I’ve found that, for me, it works about half the time. I couldn’t get it to help much on Keith’s other picture.)

So, I did an initial clean-up with Photoshop Elements, my primary photo restoring app. Then I did the FFT.

Next I put the resulting image through Topaz’s Photo AI. I tried a couple of different processes. First I used “Super Focus” which did a reasonable job, but in smoothing the image it destroyed some detail I wanted to keep. I saved that image, though, and then tried again with the Topaz app's “DeNoise” and “Sharpen” filters at varying settings. That did a better job of keeping detail—but didn’t smooth it enough.

I went back to PSE and used layers and masks, blending the 3 images (FFT and the 2 Topaz ones) trying to get the best mix I could.

Finally I did some more tidying up with PSE's manual tools.

I tried a similar sort of process with Keith’s other picture but it didn't work as well. Hopefully someone else will have a go at it, or I’ll have another go later.

But, basically that’s it: playing around, trial and error, with the different apps, trying for the best compromise I could get. There's a fair bit of manual work, trying to manipulate the abilities of the different apps.

Hope this makes sense.

Peter

3
Photograph Resources, Tips, Tutorials / Re: Newspaper images
« on: Saturday 13 September 25 10:14 BST (UK)  »
Had a go at the first one of your images, Keith. :)
Peter

4
Photograph Resources, Tips, Tutorials / Re: Newspaper images
« on: Thursday 11 September 25 11:42 BST (UK)  »
 Keith, sorry if I misunderstood your intention. I'm sure the restorers on here would consider any type photo as fair game. :)
Peter

5
Photograph Resources, Tips, Tutorials / Re: Newspaper images
« on: Thursday 11 September 25 09:31 BST (UK)  »
Hi, Keith. Looks like not many people are looking at this sub-board lately.

To try to answer your question: I guess you’re wanting to convert the images to a clean black & white, and smooth out those lines without losing too much detail. Any free app should be able to do those things. GIMP is probably the best free one around, albeit with a steep learning curve if you want to get right into restoring; but it shouldn’t take too long to learn how to use a few of its basic tools.

To take it further—if you’re wanting to really sharpen the images as well…

Traditional apps can’t effectively both smooth and sharpen the one image without a lot of painstaking manual work. Smoother means less sharp, sharper means less smooth.

Enter AI. Whereas traditional tools manipulate existing pixels, AI tools make up new pixels, so that, potentially, they can both smooth and sharpen an image at the same time. However, to date, it seems most companies producing AI apps design their tools to create images that look great but at the cost of only resembling (more or less) the original rather than restoring it. Only the more expensive ones seem to aim to actually restore images using AI.

So, have a look at some of the free and/or cheap apps online, download one or two and give them a run, bearing in mind that further improvements will probably only come at the cost of more work or more money.

And of course, post any you’re not happy with on here to see what restorers can do with them. ;D

Peter

6
Free Photo Restoration & Date Old Photographs / Re: Dating family group
« on: Wednesday 10 September 25 23:47 BST (UK)  »
My first guess, without studying the ages you give for 1891, is--left to right--12, 8, 16, 19. Looking at your ages, this would mean they could be: Edward, husband's grandmother, James and Margaret, with Lizzie not represented (unless the girl on the right is more like 15 than my estimate of 19).
Peter
Added: Perhaps if you have knowledge of any of the children marrying or dying during the 1890s it might help in narrowing them down.

7
Free Photo Restoration & Date Old Photographs / Re: Dating family group
« on: Tuesday 09 September 25 23:52 BST (UK)  »
This one seems to have dropped out of sight, so I'm just moving it up for others to notice. Meanwhile, my (uneducated) guess would be late 1890s.
Peter

8
Free Photo Restoration & Date Old Photographs / Re: Football Team 1910-11
« on: Monday 08 September 25 07:05 BST (UK)  »
My try. :)
Peter

9
Free Photo Restoration & Date Old Photographs / Re: Photo clean up of Billington Family
« on: Sunday 31 August 25 07:32 BST (UK)  »
Thanks, Neale. :)
Peter

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 ... 326