Jun 22 2007
Photo Retouching How-To (Pic of the Week)
Subtitle: I’m Fixin’ to Fix That for You
This week’s photo shows that my tomboy cousins knew how to build a snowman, but our grandfather didn’t always empty his camera in a timely manner.
After his death, his old cameras just sat collecting dust. After my grandmother passed away (Thanksgiving Day a few years ago), all us kids had a chance to walk through the house marking items we’d like to keep. The selfish side of me was a little worried my dad would want the cameras, but it was unfounded. One of them, an old Argus rangefinder, still had film in it.
Film that was at least 20 years old.
I had it developed and found a few gems. Thus was born my first major photo retouching project.
(as usual, if you know you’re never going to use this tip, then you still may enjoy the pictures)
Before
After
He snapped this picture while standing on the porch. I don’t qualify that with a “back” or “front” because it was a matter of opinion. Each porch overlooked its own street, and technically the one the U.S. Postal Service listed in the house’s address probably ran past the front yard. Functionally, however, the other side was the front. Everybody from salesmen to missionaries (there’s a difference, I’m told) used it when they came to knock on the door, and we kids used it for coming and going.
Confusing matters even more was that the porch officially considered the back faced Front Street.
But back to the topic at hand: photo retouching. It’s more time-consuming than difficult, and sometimes more frustrating than rewarding. This wasn’t originally a black and white photo. It was more of a pink and red photo. Color film doesn’t sit as well as its older monochrome sibling.
Rather than correcting the color and ending up with something even Ted Turner would have thrown out, I converted it to grayscale and set to work. There are much more complicated ways to do this, like using adjustment layers and the like, but for this I’m happy landing on the moon rather than going for Mars.
Although I obviously made other adjustments, the most valuable tool in this endeavor is the clone tool. Some programs call it the rubber stamp, and in most software toolboxes it looks like one. There are fancier variations of this, including Photoshop’s renowned healing brush, but with a little experimentation, cloning does the trick.
Did I mention that you don’t have to spend a dime to get a great imaging program on your computer? A program called The Gimp (stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program) is at your service. Originally a Linux application, it’s still alive and well on that platform as well as MacOSX.
I didn’t save every iteration of this image, so I can’t show you the entire process. Converting to grayscale is very simple in most imaging software. In Gimp it’s under Image | Mode.
The clone tool does just what it says: it samples an area of the image and then clones that to wherever you click next. While holding either Alt or Ctrl (varies), select the area you want to clone (example: a section of a tree trunk that is intact). Then, let go the key and click the area you want to repair (example: a section of the same tree trunk where the film was damaged or light leaked in. More likely these days, a piece of dust was on your camera’s sensor.)
Keep “painting” until you’re finished — the sample area will follow along, mirroring your movements. When cloning a large area, I recommend going slowly around the edges first to give yourself a good outline. If you lift the mouse button and then click again, the program will start at the original sampling point. You can touch up edges later by decreasing the brush size and selecting sample points from areas adjacent to the repaired spot.
You can also clone from one image to another, which can be useful when the damage is severe.
Of course, the cloning tool isn’t limited to repairs. It can be fun, too.
Before
After
(This is cool because it also made an optical illusion. Is the top Ben bigger?)
Kind of like the Nintendo Wii controller, you can’t really appreciate how the cloning tool works until you try it.
Have fun!
Update: When editing images, do not work on the original. Most programs allow you to make a duplicate using the Image menu or something similar. Or, you can just make another copy of it on your hard drive and open that one for editing. Of course, always back up your images.
Speaking of folks who have found old film, developed it, and then put it online, here’s a guy who buys old cameras from estate sales, pawn shops, etc. and often finds film still inside. From simple family portraits to soldiers’ personal photo diaries, he has a little of everything.
Excellent tips Mark… I’ve used them myself often.
My tool of choice is Paint Shop Pro, now owned by Corel.
I just got my Version XI, and am having a blast with it.
One of the best things it has, is a “One Step Photo Fix” that fixes a multitude of things.
Have a great weekend bud…
This is so weird. I was trying to use Gimp’s clone tool earlier this week to sub O’s shadow with the wall texture. Gave up when the help file didn’t exist. Used dropper and paint brush instead. Worked well enough for small prints I made. But now I know how. The Ben following Ben thing has really inspired me to try some of that now. Very cool. Perhaps capture R rolling over and put three of her in one pic. Ah man this is cool.
Very cool stuff, Mark. However, I still have no idea how the steps you discuss could get you from the before to the after of the old photo. The data just looks corrupted…how did you restore areas where there was no pattern to stamp? I finished your How-To and felt like I had just read a NASA report on how they got a man to the moon that discussed the details of Armstrong’s chair in great detail. Very interesting…but how did that get him to the moon? ;)
Dave - I knew I’d be preaching to the choir to some extent on this one. I used Paint Shop Pro for years back in the ’90’s. It’s a great product.
Josh - Cool! Have fun and share the results.
MG - Reminds me of an episode of Star Trek: TNG (or was it on one of the movies) when the crew lost the ability to prioritize their duties, and someone obsessed over making Picard the perfect captain’s chair.
I guess maybe I didn’t stress enough that although the clone tool was the most-used here, I also used other techniques. Brightening only certain parts of the image, cropping out areas I deemed hopeless (see the edges).
As far as restoring data where there was no pattern to stamp — I’m not sure I follow.
Where the snow is obscured by the big black line going down the picture, I cloned areas where there is snow and filled in the black line. It just paints right over the blank area. As far as the hat, the glove, and that clump of grass in the foreground? I might have added a pixel or two here or there using the paintbrush, but most of the image data was already there.
Can I guarantee that I didn’t put snow in a small spot where a tiny, brave field mouse should have been? No.
Mark -
Your paragraph about the front vs. back door made me smile. Having grown up in rural Iowa, this is a situation I am very familiar with. Apparently, country people used to buy kit houses from mail-order catalogues (weird, huh). Most of the houses were designed for town use, so when you dumped the house out in the country, you’d end up with a front door leading out into a field of grass rather than a front walk. Thus, I was accustomed as a kid to always entering friends’ houses by the back door, usually leading into the kitchen. Last year, my parents added a side porch and walk up to a new doorway into the house from the driveway so that people wouldn’t have to enter the back door into the kitchen. The front door is still there, situated in the living room, leading out to a screened porch, which in turn, leads out to …. the front lawn. Not quite the same as your two doors to two streets situation, but equally strange if you ask me:)
Moonshot - Thanks for reading and commenting. Good to see you over here.
Ah, the joys of growing up in the country. We were in a town of about 5,000 people — the county seat and biggest town within a 30-mile radius (although that’s deceiving because in most directions, it was farther than that!).
Good job Mark! I think it is great that you could salvage that top shot….what a memory.
Have a good Friday!
Thanks again. I learned some new tricks that will come in handy as I add hundreds of grandparents and great-grandparent’s photos to the archive I’m building. I’ve spent many an hour trying to fix some of these photos that were never stored in the best of conditions.
Great lesson Mark. I appreciate it.
You did an impressive job.
None of my photos are ever worth saving.
Holy busy weekend, Batman! (Referencing both Moksha’s current post and my inability to get over here for a thorough reading until just now.)
I tried out the Gimp at work last year, but now I don’t have admin rights to my laptop and I don’t have the time to learn it at home. (Well, I haven’t taken the time, really, and haven’t been forced because I rarely need to do anything more than crop, resize or add text.)
I want to learn, but I haven’t needed to yet.