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| This is a digital camera copy of an old 1950s Ektachrome slide of locomotive #54 of the Norfolk and Portsmouth Beltline Railroad. A friend asked me if I could maybe clean it up a bit! See below. (click to enlarge) |
Several years ago a good friend and fellow railroad enthusiast handed me an old 35mm Ektachrome slide from the 1950s that was riddled with fungus and asked me if I could do something with it to make it look better. I said I would try but I didn't have high hopes. I photographed the slide on a light table with a Nikon D700 (12mp) and a 60mm f/2.8 Micro Nikkor lens. That unedited image file of the slide is at the top of this page. See what I mean about not having high hopes?
I'm certainly not what anyone would consider an advanced Photoshop user. I can get around and do some of the basic things I need to do, but I can't do any of the sophisticated stuff I see Photoshop experts do. Originally, I worked on this image for several hours and give him a so-so result. He was happy that it was better than the original. I then completely forgot about this photograph.
The other day, I stumbled upon this image in my Lightroom catalog and thought to myself that with the new tools and improvements in today's version of Photoshop, what could I now do with it? The result is below.
The image has literally hundreds of large and small fungus spots and fungus ‘tentacles’ that had grown on the original emulsion (this fungus can also grow inside your lens in very humid climates but that is for another post) plus literally thousands of tiny black spots all over the sky area. There was a lot of yellow, blue and green fungal discoloration as well. I wasn't sure how successful I could be but I thought I was up for the challenge. With the newest tools in Photoshop Beta and with a bit of Lightroom as well, I found 'fixing it' wasn't that difficult at all. I was surprised. I am pleased with the outcome.
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| This represents about 40 minutes of work in the latest version of Photoshop Beta. It isn't perfect but I think it looks acceptable now. At least I'm happy with the result. (click to enlarge) |
My editing is still not perfect and I'm sure that Photoshop gurus could do much better. That said, I spent about 40 minutes working on this image mainly using the new "Remove" tool as well as the spot healing and clone brushes in the beta Photoshop that is available for download. Using the ‘Remove’ tool is not much different than using a marker to highlight text on a page. Very easy. After I had removed all of the fungus in the sky I also used the "Dust and Scratches" menu item to clean up all of the thousands of tiny black spots. I then returned the image to Lightroom Classic where I color corrected it and added a bit of texture and clarity to the foreground. In other words, pretty basic stuff. Nothing really whiz bang or fancy. Stuff most of us can do.
My point is to highlight two things. If you have old images with which you struggled editing in the past, give them another try with these new tools. With the newest Photoshop tools as well as Lightroom's new masking tools, you might be amazed at what you can now do. Add to that the sharpening and noise removal tools and you can give old, 'never-to-see-the-light-of-day' images new life.
Second, if you are a digital photographer and don't know how to use the basic tools in your editing programs, you really need to learn. After all, one of the benefits of digital photography is having these kinds of tools at hand. You don't need to become an expert, but at least learn some basic functions. There are plenty of free as well as paid tutorials on YouTube from which to learn any and all things about editing software. In my case, with the knowledge I’ve picked up over the years through just experimenting, failing and repeatedly trying different things, I was able to help a friend.
Thanks for looking. Enjoy!
Dennis A. Mook
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The original certainly required some effort, and you did nice work.
ReplyDeleteYour post reminds me of a similar experience 5-6 years ago. A young lady from church had kept her favorite photo of her mom and uncle (taken as teenagers) clipped to her car's visor. Over the years, it became severely damaged from the sun, heat, and humidity, to the point it was unsalvageable, and she didn't have an original negative or any other copies. She asked if I had any ideas, and I told her "no promises" but let me take a look. It turned into a challenge, then a labor of love. 30+ hours later, over the course of a few weeks, I had painstakingly repaired all the damage using Photoshop, often painting in my best estimate of what the original would have looked like. The tears in her eyes and huge hug when I gave her a new original sized print plus an 8x8 enlargement made every hour worth it. Of course, I would have done it with no thanks necessary as I know her family would also do anything for me if the need arose.
Your post makes me wonder what the task might have been like today with the available tools.
Doug
Excellent story. Thank you for sharing it. Also, thank you for your generosity in helping others.
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