Very old Victorian photos

My wife has inherited a very old family photograph album. Some of the
phots in it are dated 1845. I'm not sure about the dates without doing
some research on the various census sites.

However some of the old photos are very faded with a lot of the
information unreadable. Most have reverted to a faded brownish hue.

I'm a novice with Photoshop Elements so I would appreciate some advice
about restoring them. Restoring them back to b+w results in a very
washed out looking print.
See Dropbox for an example of one of them.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7cbx1369lj...ephens1845.tif

Peter

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The e-mail address obviously doesn't exist. If it's essential
that you contact me then try peterATpfjamesDOTcoDOTuk

On 09 Feb 2014 in rec.photo.digital, Peter James wrote:

My wife has inherited a very old family photograph album. Some of the
phots in it are dated 1845. I'm not sure about the dates without doing
some research on the various census sites.

However some of the old photos are very faded with a lot of the
information unreadable. Most have reverted to a faded brownish hue.

I'm a novice with Photoshop Elements so I would appreciate some advice
about restoring them. Restoring them back to b+w results in a very
washed out looking print.
See Dropbox for an example of one of them.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7cbx1369lj...ephens1845.tif

You might drop into some of the genealogy groups and see if somebody has
suggestions. soc.genealogy.methods and soc.genealogy.computing might be
appropriate. s.g.methods is moderated, and I'm not quite sure of the
status of the moderation... There's also alt.genealogy, which is more
free-form.

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Joe Makowiec
http://makowiec.org/
Email: http://makowiec.org/contact/?Joe
Usenet Improvement Project: http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/

(Peter James) wrote in news:1lgsjuh.2cmlmb1ejd1w6N%
:

My wife has inherited a very old family photograph album. Some of the
phots in it are dated 1845. I'm not sure about the dates without doing
some research on the various census sites.

However some of the old photos are very faded with a lot of the
information unreadable. Most have reverted to a faded brownish hue.

I'm a novice with Photoshop Elements so I would appreciate some advice
about restoring them. Restoring them back to b+w results in a very
washed out looking print.
See Dropbox for an example of one of them.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7cbx1369lj...ephens1845.tif

Peter


Before changing to grayscale, adjust the color to neutralize the yellowing
of the paper. Go down on red, down a little on green and up on blue until
thw whites (like the border) looks white. Change the mode to grayscale. Use
adjustment levels change the contrast (left slider up to about 90, left
slider down to about 240). crop off the border. Vignetted pictures like
your sample can stand to be cropped even tighter. Here is what I got with a
quick try at your sample. I use an old version of Photoshop but I assume
Elements is about the same.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ivqytn8m1k...phens1845b.tif


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On 2014.02.09, 03:14 , Peter James wrote:
My wife has inherited a very old family photograph album. Some of the
phots in it are dated 1845. I'm not sure about the dates without doing
some research on the various census sites.

However some of the old photos are very faded with a lot of the
information unreadable. Most have reverted to a faded brownish hue.

I'm a novice with Photoshop Elements so I would appreciate some advice
about restoring them. Restoring them back to b+w results in a very
washed out looking print.
See Dropbox for an example of one of them.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7cbx1369lj...ephens1845.tif

I imported it into ACR, desaturated it and brought up the blackpoint to
give it some contrast. Some of the yellow remains (as grey) of course
but it avoids a washed out look.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4bck005l7o...ephens1845.jpg

Not sure you can do that with Elements however.
--
Privacy has become an essential personal chore that most
people are not trained to perform.
- Jaron Lanier, Scientific American, 2013.11.

On 2014-02-09 21:09:07 +0000, Alan Browne
said:

On 2014.02.09, 03:14 , Peter James wrote:
My wife has inherited a very old family photograph album. Some of the
phots in it are dated 1845. I'm not sure about the dates without doing
some research on the various census sites.

However some of the old photos are very faded with a lot of the
information unreadable. Most have reverted to a faded brownish hue.

I'm a novice with Photoshop Elements so I would appreciate some advice
about restoring them. Restoring them back to b+w results in a very
washed out looking print.
See Dropbox for an example of one of them.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7cbx1369lj...ephens1845.tif

I imported it into ACR, desaturated it and brought up the blackpoint to
give it some contrast. Some of the yellow remains (as grey) of course
but it avoids a washed out look.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4bck005l7o...ephens1845.jpg

Not sure you can do that with Elements however.

I took a slightly different approach.
The age damage to this image is severe, eliminating much of the detail
surrounding the subject. That is not a deliberate vignette. Detail has
been lost totally in the trousers, furniture, and the top hat at his
left elbow and is not recoverable.

Anyway, I didn't do a straight grey scale conversion, that ends up
looking too much like it was run through a photocopier.
I took the original TIF into PS CC, and directly into NIK Silver Efex
Pro2. There I tried various color filters finding a green filter worked
best. I then made some local adjustments to the subject area, and
applied a very light sepia.
Back into PS I cleaned up the mount card and made a slight contrast
adjustment to get this result.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1295663/Fil...phens1845B.tif

--
Regards,

Savageduck

Peter James wrote:

My wife has inherited a very old family photograph album. Some of the
phots in it are dated 1845. I'm not sure about the dates without doing
some research on the various census sites.

However some of the old photos are very faded with a lot of the
information unreadable. Most have reverted to a faded brownish hue.

I'm a novice with Photoshop Elements so I would appreciate some advice
about restoring them. Restoring them back to b+w results in a very
washed out looking print.
See Dropbox for an example of one of them.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7cbx1369lj...ephens1845.tif

Peter
Thank you all for the replies and the examples of GtGrandfather's
photographs.
I'll try the same sort of approach to the rest of them, and again
thanks.

Peter

--
-
The e-mail address obviously doesn't exist. If it's essential
that you contact me then try peterATpfjamesDOTcoDOTuk

On 09/02/2014 08:14, Peter James wrote:
My wife has inherited a very old family photograph album. Some of the
phots in it are dated 1845. I'm not sure about the dates without doing
some research on the various census sites.

However some of the old photos are very faded with a lot of the
information unreadable. Most have reverted to a faded brownish hue.

I'm a novice with Photoshop Elements so I would appreciate some advice
about restoring them. Restoring them back to b+w results in a very
washed out looking print.
See Dropbox for an example of one of them.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7cbx1369lj...ephens1845.tif

You will often find that old early photos have yellow or orange marks on
them where the fixer wasn't properly washed out. The simplest way to get
the best out of them is separate the image to RGB and then promote
whichever has the best contrast to a monochrome image.

The original photographer has probably carefully toned that print. It
doesn't show any of the common poor process chemistry faults though it
does show the uneavenness of the emulsion in those days.

You might have to make a cunning linear combo of the faded and unfaded
one to get a clean image. Once you have a defect free image the easiest
way to adjust for modern tastes is with the histogram adjustment tool.

Be aware that many prints were done high key with a fairly faint image
and extremely early prints were etched on metal.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On 2014.02.09, 19:17 , Savageduck wrote:
On 2014-02-09 21:09:07 +0000, Alan Browne
said:

On 2014.02.09, 03:14 , Peter James wrote:
My wife has inherited a very old family photograph album. Some of the
phots in it are dated 1845. I'm not sure about the dates without doing
some research on the various census sites.

However some of the old photos are very faded with a lot of the
information unreadable. Most have reverted to a faded brownish hue.

I'm a novice with Photoshop Elements so I would appreciate some advice
about restoring them. Restoring them back to b+w results in a very
washed out looking print.
See Dropbox for an example of one of them.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7cbx1369lj...ephens1845.tif

I imported it into ACR, desaturated it and brought up the blackpoint
to give it some contrast. Some of the yellow remains (as grey) of
course but it avoids a washed out look.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4bck005l7o...ephens1845.jpg

Not sure you can do that with Elements however.

I took a slightly different approach.
The age damage to this image is severe, eliminating much of the detail
surrounding the subject. That is not a deliberate vignette. Detail has
been lost totally in the trousers, furniture, and the top hat at his
left elbow and is not recoverable.

Anyway, I didn't do a straight grey scale conversion, that ends up
looking too much like it was run through a photocopier.
I took the original TIF into PS CC, and directly into NIK Silver Efex
Pro2. There I tried various color filters finding a green filter worked
best. I then made some local adjustments to the subject area, and
applied a very light sepia.
Back into PS I cleaned up the mount card and made a slight contrast
adjustment to get this result.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1295663/Fil...phens1845B.tif

Looks a bit harsh to my eyes. Black specks everywhere... odd.

--

Privacy has become an essential personal chore that most
people are not trained to perform.
- Jaron Lanier, Scientific American, 2013.11.

On 2014-02-10 21:54:16 +0000, Alan Browne
said:

On 2014.02.09, 19:17 , Savageduck wrote:
On 2014-02-09 21:09:07 +0000, Alan Browne
said:

On 2014.02.09, 03:14 , Peter James wrote:
My wife has inherited a very old family photograph album. Some of the
phots in it are dated 1845. I'm not sure about the dates without doing
some research on the various census sites.

However some of the old photos are very faded with a lot of the
information unreadable. Most have reverted to a faded brownish hue.

I'm a novice with Photoshop Elements so I would appreciate some advice
about restoring them. Restoring them back to b+w results in a very
washed out looking print.
See Dropbox for an example of one of them.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7cbx1369lj...ephens1845.tif

I imported it into ACR, desaturated it and brought up the blackpoint
to give it some contrast. Some of the yellow remains (as grey) of
course but it avoids a washed out look.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4bck005l7o...ephens1845.jpg

Not sure you can do that with Elements however.

I took a slightly different approach.
The age damage to this image is severe, eliminating much of the detail
surrounding the subject. That is not a deliberate vignette. Detail has
been lost totally in the trousers, furniture, and the top hat at his
left elbow and is not recoverable.

Anyway, I didn't do a straight grey scale conversion, that ends up
looking too much like it was run through a photocopier.
I took the original TIF into PS CC, and directly into NIK Silver Efex
Pro2. There I tried various color filters finding a green filter worked
best. I then made some local adjustments to the subject area, and
applied a very light sepia.
Back into PS I cleaned up the mount card and made a slight contrast
adjustment to get this result.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1295663/Fil...phens1845B.tif

Looks a bit harsh to my eyes. Black specks everywhere... odd.

OK! Let's compare.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1295663/Fil...enshot_565.jpg

--
Regards,

Savageduck

On 2014.02.10, 17:04 , Savageduck wrote:
On 2014-02-10 21:54:16 +0000, Alan Browne
said:

On 2014.02.09, 19:17 , Savageduck wrote:
On 2014-02-09 21:09:07 +0000, Alan Browne
said:

On 2014.02.09, 03:14 , Peter James wrote:
My wife has inherited a very old family photograph album. Some of the
phots in it are dated 1845. I'm not sure about the dates without
doing
some research on the various census sites.

However some of the old photos are very faded with a lot of the
information unreadable. Most have reverted to a faded brownish hue.

I'm a novice with Photoshop Elements so I would appreciate some advice
about restoring them. Restoring them back to b+w results in a very
washed out looking print.
See Dropbox for an example of one of them.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7cbx1369lj...ephens1845.tif


I imported it into ACR, desaturated it and brought up the blackpoint
to give it some contrast. Some of the yellow remains (as grey) of
course but it avoids a washed out look.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4bck005l7o...ephens1845.jpg

Not sure you can do that with Elements however.

I took a slightly different approach.
The age damage to this image is severe, eliminating much of the detail
surrounding the subject. That is not a deliberate vignette. Detail has
been lost totally in the trousers, furniture, and the top hat at his
left elbow and is not recoverable.

Anyway, I didn't do a straight grey scale conversion, that ends up
looking too much like it was run through a photocopier.
I took the original TIF into PS CC, and directly into NIK Silver Efex
Pro2. There I tried various color filters finding a green filter worked
best. I then made some local adjustments to the subject area, and
applied a very light sepia.
Back into PS I cleaned up the mount card and made a slight contrast
adjustment to get this result.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1295663/Fil...phens1845B.tif


Looks a bit harsh to my eyes. Black specks everywhere... odd.

OK! Let's compare.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1295663/Fil...enshot_565.jpg

Looking at your (full sized shot) saw all sorts of harsh contrasts and
little black dots everywhere... these aren't as bad in mine because the
'grey' left in place reduces those contrasts.

(And no - I'm not interested in fooling with this further).

--
Privacy has become an essential personal chore that most
people are not trained to perform.
- Jaron Lanier, Scientific American, 2013.11.