Oily appearance on old Photo restoration

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Multistrada

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Hi Folks, I'm trying to restore some old photos (1930s) for my rugby club. I do not have the negatives to work from. Most are straight forward cloning tidying jobs but a few are not. The chemical composition seems to have broken down on some of these really old ones and there is an oily appearance on parts of the photo (fortunately mostly towards the edges) which reflects the light of the scanner causing a reflective glow on parts of the scanned image. There is nothing adjacent I can use to clone from and I wondered if anyone has encountered this before and found a Photoshop solution (elements 10) to the problem. Thanks
 
Can you put up some scans? Sounds like some sort of glazed finish, but not my area and impossible to say anything much without seeing them. You could try asking at the Film & Conventional window down the hall.

(Oh, and welcome to TP, by the way!)
 
Thanks, The insert picture box seems to be asking for a URL rather than a straight upload, not sure what I'm supposed to do with that but I've posted it on the club website so you can access it and see what I'm talking about.
My other option as far as the light reflection is concerned I suppose is to re-photograph it which may well be a better option and reduce the glare although the oily appearance will still need dealing with as best I can. There are a lot of these old photos, it's a very old club and I am conscious that the ones dating back to the early 20th century are getting a bit jaded. I'm just trying to do my best to preserve them as they are now at least. Cheers
1364840356_rugby-photo.jpg
 
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Put up some photos and maybe someone can help

Realspeed
 
Multistrada said:
Thanks, The insert picture box seems to be asking for a URL rather than a straight upload, not sure what I'm supposed to do with that but I've posted it on the club website so you can access it and see what I'm talking about.
My other option as far as the light reflection is concerned I suppose is to re-photograph it which may well be a better option and reduce the glare although the oily appearance will still need dealing with as best I can. There are a lot of these old photos, it's a very old club and I am conscious that the ones dating back to the early 20th century are getting a bit jaded. I'm just trying to do my best to preserve them as they are now at least. Cheers
1364840356_rugby-photo.jpg
Click to expand...

Bumph on uploading

...and it will help if you allow Edit (box currently with a red 'x' in it just below your name). People will be able to have a go at improving your shots:

My TP> Edit Your Details, scroll to bottom of page> Image Editing

The shot you linked to is certainly rescuable, so if it's typical you should be OK. (I'm on a laptop at the moment, but will have a go tomorrow if I get a chance).
 
Ok in elements 10 go to enhance in full (next to quick and guided) and on the drop down convert to black and white. That will get rid of the blue on the sides. Then spot healing tool (yellow rubber thingy) and proximity match (best to convert the square where wavy line is in the box next to it. Choose the size of the square and work bit by bit. best save after every so many times so you don't have to start again. You can also adjust the contrast and sharpening may help.



here is a starter for you. first bit done just now work on the side of the picture

Realspeed
 
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its a pleasure, its one thing I actually really enjoy doing is improving old photographs. I have just completed a project for a friend who knows someone whose daughter passed away recently and the photo was 20 years old. Obviously it couldn't be bought back to as new and had been scanned from an old print. On top of that there is a slight reduction getting it off the internet. However they seemed pleased with the result. I started from working on an old photo of my late parents just to see how much could be pulled back from it.

Here is the results from that effort
dsc7292800x600.jpg


As you can see it goes to show how much can be recovered without the use of expensive editing programs,. This is what really started my interest in photo restoration
 
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Wow, that's amazing! I think I could have talked myself into a full time task with so much history to record. The most charming one hangs 6 foot wide in our clubhouse from 1896
http://www.lionrugby.com/info.php They are well worth preserving! Cheers
 





that was an easy one to do, taken from your link to club
 
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