BleepingComputer.com: Restore Old B & W Photo

I have a very old 1971 black and white photo that I scanned. The original photo does not show any sign of this yellowisg strip down the middle. Is there a way / site / technique / tip or trick .....!! that can help to restore this beautiful old photo. Note that it has been cropped.



Scanner : Canon Pixma MP780

Photo Editors : FastStone (image Viewer, Capture, Max View and Photo Resizer)
Photo Tool Kit

These are new additions and have no idea how to use them yet.!

Hope you can help..

Many Thanks

I had fairly good luck getting rid of the yellow when I used IrfanView:
Image/Convert to grey scale.

See if your picture editors have an option like that. You could then work with contrast/saturation to get rid of some of the lines.

Hope this helps,
Cheers,
John

This post has been edited by jgweed: 21 March 2007 - 06:21 PM

And may I suggest you perhaps try scanning the photo using a different setting?

For instance, some scanners will let you 'choose' what type of image it's scanning ... whether a 'text' or newspaper or magazine photo, etc. (It's okay to lie to your scanner - it doesn't know any better - gentle smile).

Often the 'lines' and 'moire' (wavy effect) will simply disappear if the photo is scanned as something other than a photo. (Very old studio photos are the hardest to work with when scanning, sadly, and it takes a bit of fiddling at times).

Hope this helps!

ACK! I can't see the image...photo bucket is blocked at work!

The only advice I can give (since I can't see the image) is to try different settings within the scanner itself (photo, text, lower resolutions, no sharpening etc. etc.). Turn off any custom filters (newspaper, magazine etc.) if applicable.

You could also clean the scanner glass with Windex (or any glass cleaner)....spray the cleaner directly onto a lint free cloth then wipe the glass down. Also, put a solid white piece of paper on top of the image (3-5 pages would be better), as this will help to avoid the scanner picking up what's on the other side of the image, like the scanner cover.

I'll look at the image when I get home and hopefully will be able to give some better advice!

The yellow stripes on the picture indeed suggests that there is something on the glass or a lightfall from the window perhaps?

Look at the photo under a bright white light.....do you see any streak marks on it? Flip it over and look at the back...any streaks there? If not, then scan a solid white piece of paper and then scan a black one and check the scans for streaks. If the streaks are on the image when looking under a bright light, then you know that's the problem. If the streaks are on the scanned solid black and solid white images, then you know that the issue is with the scanner itself (most likely streaks on the glass...perhaps the bottom of the glass).

I'd still try to do what I suggested in the first post, and hope that it solves the problems! Post back and let us know how you make out with this!

If I may pop back into this discussion for a wee minute, please ...

Oddly enough, some very old studio photos in particular seem to have a 'coating' that may not always be visible to our eye even under bright light yet often gives the effect of the 'moire' (wavy lines) look or straight smeary lines when scanned. When first confronted by literally dozens of these, off to our professional developer I went - to be told that the processing system was very different 'back then' and the 'ink' didn't always 'lay smoothly' onto the paper it was being developed on.

Both he and another professional developer offered to make re-prints - at $15 each - eep! So if you can 'fib' to your scanner about what it's scanning and that helps great - and if not, I suspect many people here are highly skilled in helping you learn the magic of 'cloning' when photo editing.

Do wish you the very best as I know how frustrating things like this can be.

Like Mara said, check to make sure you are scanning in black and white. I had a very simalar problem because my scanner was scanning in color.

By the way, that looks like a very pretty lady in the photo...