Help fixing this photo?

[TheGreatSoprendo]

I'm getting married next month and the missus has asked me to do a slideshow of pics of us as babies/kids to show at the reception. It's been great fun digging through the old photo albums, but having scanned the photos we've chosen, it's apparent that some of them aren't the best quality when scanned.

Here's one of me on an early driving lesson ( ):



Can anyone advise me how to get rid of the mottled appearence on the pic, which is caused by the heavy grain of the paper used for the original print? I have recently invested in a copy of PS Elements but haven't had anough time to play about with it yet to have anything more than a very basic understanding of how to use it.

Any help much appreciated.

[Simpo Two]

Try rephotographing it with flatter/softer lighting.

[tog]

[XG332]

I can only dream of another "photoshop out this lamp" thread.

[TheGreatSoprendo]

tog said:

Top job, thanks for that!

Can I ask how you did it? I have 3 or 4 other pics similar to this, so it would be great to be able to fix those as well as learning how to do something other than mega-basic stuff in PS!

[TheGreatSoprendo]

Simpo Two said:

Try rephotographing it with flatter/softer lighting.

Thanks, I wish I'd thought of that at the time! Unfortunately, I'm not going to have access to the original pics again now before the wedding. Good idea though....

[jimmy156]

Hi,

I work in a photo lab so scan a lot of old photos. It looks (by the detail in the image, and the time its taking to load on my screen) that it was scanned at very high res, which is going to bring out every detail in the print, this will be exaggerted by the light used when scanning which is obvisouly very direct and bright. Try scanning at a lower DPI, also perhaps try adjusting any unsharp mask/sharpening filters that are beinh applied. I personally think it will be easier to get the scan right, then trying to fix it in photoshop later.

[jimmy156]

I work in a photo lab so scan a lot of old photos. It looks (by the detail in the image, and the time its taking to load on my screen) that it was scanned at very high res, which is going to bring out every detail in the print, this will be exaggerted by the light used when scanning which is obvisouly very direct and bright. Try scanning at a lower DPI, also perhaps try adjusting any unsharp mask/sharpening filters that are beinh applied. I personally think it will be easier to get the scan right, then trying to fix it in photoshop later

Ignore that as others posted while i was writing it, i am at work so posting takes a while

[tog]

I just did it quick and simple with the Dust and Scratches filter (Filter > Noise > D&S) in CS3, then a little unsharp mask afterwards. I don't know what filters there are in Elements. The Gaussian Blur filter would also do it quite simply. All you want to do is soften it enough to lose the paper's pattern but not so much that you lose too much detail from the photo.