Repair Scanned Photos
Got lots of photos that looked abused? Scan them and clean them up.Dave Johnson
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Feature: Repair Scanned Photos
Scanners are really good at what they do. When asked to digitize an old photo, a high-quality scanner will reproduce it in stunning detail--including all the creases, rips, tears, and scratches it might have. Of course, many modern scanners include automatic image cleanup technology. Many Minolta and Nikon scanners, for instance, include a Kodak technology called Digital ICE that removes dust and even cleans up some scratches. Even so, you'll often end up with scanned images that bear the mark of a harsh life, rife with scratches and tears.
As we all know, some of our most precious heirloom photos have some if not all of these defects. Still, as those precious family photos continue to age, it's increasingly important to preserve them in digital form before they degrade further.
This week, let's use Corel's Paint Shop Pro 9 to repair some of the damage that time has caused to our old pictures. The techniques I discuss here work almost exactly the same in Paint Shop Pro 8, and they're also similar in other programs like Adobe Photoshop Elements.
Fix Small Scratches
I have a lot of old photos that haven't been treated well over the years. Some of those pictures have been damaged like this one, which has a long tear and a short scratch. The tear is on the left, running though the shirt collar. You can tell it's a tear because it's a dark line formed by the overlapping edges of the torn photo. The small scratch on the right edge, directly across from the tear, is white because the top layer of the photo has been scraped away, revealing the paper underneath.
Let's work on the scratch first. This isn't really bad, so we can try running Paint Shop Pro 9's automated scratch remover on it.
After saving a copy of the photo on your hard drive, select the scratch. To do this, click the Freehand Selection tool (in the fifth cubby from the top of the toolbar on the left side of the screen) and set the Selection Type to Freehand in the Tool Options palette at the top of the screen. (If Tool Options is not turned on, choose View, Palettes, Tool Options from the menu.) Trace the scratch with the Freehand tool until it's completely selected.
Next, choose Adjust, Add/Remove Noise, Automatic Small Scratch Remover. This feature is best suited to small and narrow scratches, so it's just what we need here. In the dialog box, be sure that only "Remove light scratches" is checked, and then observe the effect in the preview window in the right; you may need to zoom or pan around to see the scratch clearly. If the tool didn't get it all, set the "Strength level" radio button to Aggressive.
Your mileage may vary, but that technique works pretty well for me. If you like the result, click OK and remove the selection by right-clicking with the tool anywhere in your photo.
Erase a Tear
The tear is too big for Paint Shop Pro's automatic remover. If you don't believe me, try selecting it and running the Automatic Small Scratch Remover set to "Remove dark scratches." You'll find that the program can't remove all of it.
Instead, try using the Scratch Remover tool. Make sure there are no selections anywhere in the photo (choose Selections, Select None) and then select the Scratch Remover from the eighth cubby (the same place that you usually find the Clone Brush).
In the Tool Options palette, choose Small scratches from the preset menu or set the width to about 15 pixels. Then click on the tear and drag the tool to another location on the tear. When you release the mouse, you'll find that that region is repaired. Continue to work on the tear in small sections--about 5 or 6 should work for something this size.
You'll see an improvement when you're done, and it's not bad for 30 seconds' worth of effort. But you might be bothered by the smeared look of the repair; the Scratch Remover doesn't always give perfect results. If you don't like the semi-automatic approach, undo your Scratch Remover efforts and use the Clone Brush instead.
In the Tool Options palette, set the Clone Brush (found in the same cubby as the Scratch Remover) to about 10 or 15 pixels in size, which is just slightly wider than the tear itself. Make sure the opacity is 100 percent. Now right-click very close to the tear and then click on the tear itself. Dab a bit, making a few clicks to erase the tear. Then move away, right-click to change the source, and click some more on the tear.
For the best results, alternate making the source above and below the tear--that way you'll get a more realistic pattern and lighting effect. When you're done, you might want to drop the opacity to about 50 percent and dab at the tear again a little to "mix in" some other nearby patterns from both above and below the tear to complete the illusion.
For more tips on fixing scanned photos, you might want to read one of my older columns, "Clean Up Scanned Images."
Dave's Favorites: Stepping Up to Paint Shop Pro 9
Since this column's inception, I've used Paint Shop Pro to illustrate image editing techniques. Why Paint Shop Pro? The short answer is that it has almost all the commonly needed features found in an expensive program like Adobe Photoshop--at a fraction of the cost and with far less complexity. I like teaching people how to work with photos using Paint Shop Pro because it's a very straightforward program. Yet at the same time, you can transfer your knowledge of working with layers or selection tools to any of the other editors as well, like PhotoImpact or Photoshop Elements.
This week, I'm transitioning from using Paint Shop Pro 8 to Paint Shop Pro 9 in our features. This newest version of the program has been available for about six months, so many of you have already upgraded. And if you haven't, don't worry; everything we do will still be possible to duplicate using the older version (or most any other image editor). The specific keystrokes and menu commands may vary a bit, and even then you won't see much difference if you're using Paint Shop Pro 8.
So what's new in Paint Shop Pro 9? The changes in Paint Shop Pro 9 aren't earth shattering--in fact, at a glance you'd have trouble telling it apart from version 8. But there are a few cool additions under the hood. First and foremost, there's a new History palette that lets you undo operations you performed without undoing all of the subsequent steps. This is pretty cool, since for the first time you can selectively remove a filter you applied half an hour ago without losing all the work you did afterwards.
Folks enamored with their digital camera's unprocessed RAW format will appreciate the fact that the program now opens most kinds of RAW files. There are also some new art media effects, like the ability to apply a background texture to new, blank image files and the ability to mix colors like a painter might.
Paint Shop Pro now belongs to Corel, so you can read more at the company's Web site. It's available at PC World's Product Finder for about $100.
Q&A: Looking for a Portable CD Burner
I'm planning a trip to Africa and would like to be able to burn images from my digital camera directly to CD-R without taking a laptop. Weight consideration on some of the African flights is a major reason for leaving the laptop at home. What do you recommend?
--Gregory Andracke, New York
I think you're in luck, Gregory. There are a handful of very small and lightweight portable CD burners on the market, and they're generally optimized for digital photographers--that is, they have media card readers built right in. They let you insert a media card from your camera and copy all of your image files to a relatively secure CD while you're still traveling, then erase the media card and continue shooting. Check out any of these gadgets:
Hot Pic of the Week
Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.
Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.
This Week's Hot Pic: "Roasting Marshmallows," by Hans Samios, Madison, Alabama
About this photo, Hans writes: "While the family roasted marshmallows, I took this picture of my stepdaughter, Fleur, who was concentrating hard on getting it right.
"I took the picture with my Sony DSC-V1 using the infrared mode--hence the interesting lighting. The original picture had some noise, which I removed using Noiseware Community Edition. Other than that, I made no changes to the picture."