Double Exposure Repair

[Grumpy1954]

I've been taking the opportunity afforded by lockdown to go through and scan the hundreds of photographs that I've been meaning to put onto the NAS for years.

Quite a few of them have been double exposed, in those days I couldn't afford a decent camera, and in any case my skills were such that it would have been a bit of a waste.  There's so many of them that I'm guessing that the camera didn't always wind on properly.

Anyway, what I'm asking is if there is an easy way to remove double exposure? 

I'm assuming not, given that the original source is  a physical piece of glossy paper, rather than pixels.

I've had a play with cloning, patch tool and inpainting, all of which work where the correct image isn't too complicated, replacing vegetation for example.  But anything much more involved and it just doesn't look right, although that could be my lack of technique.

I've attached an image which should make it all clear, one picture worth a thousand words and all that. The offending area is around the tracks and blade of the excavator.  The grassy stuff is easy, but the tracks are proving a right pain.

All suggestions gratefully accepted, although I rather suspect that it will come down to lots of minute adjustments and industrial quantities of patience.  I did have a trawl through the forum, but everything I found related to creating, rather than removing, a double exposure.

Or just not bother, an option which is looking very attractive at present.

[Old Bruce]

2 hours ago, Grumpy1954 said:

what I'm asking is if there is an easy way to remove double exposure? 

Asked and answered...

2 hours ago, Grumpy1954 said:

I rather suspect that it will come down to lots of minute adjustments and industrial quantities of patience.

You have chosen a very difficult thing to do, I would concentrate on the scanning for now and leave the fine painting (that is essentially what you'll have to do) for later.

Aside: the double exposures could be a fault of the printing process instead of the camera.

[Grumpy1954]

Many thanks for the reply, your suggestion sounds good to me, I'm convinced.  😁

It's not as if I haven't got enough to be getting on with improving all the properly exposed scanned photographs.

Although it's reassuring to know that the actual process I'm attempting is difficult in itself, rather than my lack of knowledge or ability.

[markw]

So, this is possibly not the best or most elegant way of cleaning up your image, I basically just kept throwing masked adjustment layers at it!
But it might give you a simple starting point and ideas as to what can be done with just adjustment layers.
And we still haven’t touched on what could be done with the Clone tool, Inpainting, Patch tool, etc… So many possibility’s to explore!
Lockdown makes work for idle hands!

Double Exposure Fix Test.afphoto.zip

[Old Bruce]

NO!!! He wanted to get rid of the digger! [smiley face emoticon] 

Much respect for the work, I didn't even think about thinking about trying.

3 hours ago, markw said:

Lockdown makes work for idle hands!

 

[Grumpy1954]

Wow, that's great, hugely impressive.

Many thanks

I hadn't thought of using masked adjustment layers, I'll give it a go with some of the other double exposures.