Trying to fix a 43 yr old

[BARBAKANE]

My brother's 60th bday is coming up next week, and this is one of the last photo's I'm trying to fix. I know it's pretty roached, and I'm trying to restore it to a somewhat usable shot. The grain is the biggest culprit, and I'm using gaussian blur to soften it up a little. To fix the colors is fairly straight-forward, but the grain is killin' me. It's a scan of the original 4x6 photo. I don;t have the original, and my other brother is using affinity to work on it to.

Question being: Is it too far gone? The little blemishes here and there aren't a biggie. Just the overall noise/grain. Any help would do. I've watched several of Olivio's video's, since he breaks everything down nicely.

Attached is the file. Anyone up for a major challenge? Or maybe share a link to how to get the results I need? Thanks for any help...Dave

[Andy05]

As for discoloured images, I'd use some AI in order to get a base to work with. Saves a lot of time and you could get some quite impressive first results for fine-tune them in Affinity.

https://playback.fm/colorize-photo being an example:

 

[carl123]

Denoise filter should take care of the "grain" then just a "Unsharp Mask" filter to resharpen it.

Then it's just up to you for the look you want to end up with.

 

[lacerto]

(...)

[lineweight]

9 hours ago, Andy05 said:

As for discoloured images, I'd use some AI in order to get a base to work with. Saves a lot of time and you could get some quite impressive first results for fine-tune them in Affinity.

https://playback.fm/colorize-photo being an example:

 

Not very impressive at all, as you can see it's got lots of colours completely wrong, and made a right mess of several bits of the photo.

[Andy05]

4 hours ago, lineweight said:

Not very impressive at all, as you can see it's got lots of colours completely wrong, and made a right mess of several bits of the photo.

Wow, Einstein! You know the meaning of terms like "base" and "example", do you? There are better DeepAIs out there, some even offer the possibilities for changing options and features, but they are not free. Yet, for someone who doesn't know where to start, they might provide a better base to start with than the original source. Not more, not less.

As @Lagarto showed correctly, fixing colour casts usually needs more than a simple click or filter. But more importantly, it requires some knowledge and skills about how to do it. I assumed the OP might not have enough of either of these—otherwise he wouldn't have asked for help here.

And if you compare the AI driven result with Legarto's excellent base, your statement about "lots of colours being completely wrong" is completely wrong.  Keep in mind, it's easier for a beginner to correct wrong colouring i. e. on the hands in the middle of the image, if you have references in the same image you can clone or copy from. 

[lineweight]

20 hours ago, Andy05 said:

Wow, Einstein! You know the meaning of terms like "base" and "example", do you? There are better DeepAIs out there, some even offer the possibilities for changing options and features, but they are not free. Yet, for someone who doesn't know where to start, they might provide a better base to start with than the original source. Not more, not less.

As @Lagarto showed correctly, fixing colour casts usually needs more than a simple click or filter. But more importantly, it requires some knowledge and skills about how to do it. I assumed the OP might not have enough of either of these—otherwise he wouldn't have asked for help here.

And if you compare the AI driven result with Legarto's excellent base, your statement about "lots of colours being completely wrong" is completely wrong.  Keep in mind, it's easier for a beginner to correct wrong colouring i. e. on the hands in the middle of the image, if you have references in the same image you can clone or copy from. 

Maybe there are better AIs out there - I was simply observing that the example you provided has done a terrible job. And it would be no good as a base - it has removed information that is in the original image and replaced it with things that are simply wrong, and it has introduced ugly artefacts that you would have to work hard to get rid of again. For someone with no idea how to deal with colour casts, it would be better just to leave the original alone.

The most obvious example of where it has messed up is if you look at the chap with the little boy on his knee. It's clear in the original that their tops are yellow and blue. And this remains clear in Lagarto's adjusted image. The AI has entirely thrown away that colour information though. To the extent that you couldn't recover it with any simple adjustments. Look what it's done on the framed picture at top left - it's created two different reds where in the original we can see they are the same. And it's changed clearly blonde hair to purple.

Does it provide a better 'base' to start with, than the original? No, it absolutely doesn't in my opinion. In fact I'd say the skills needed to make the AI-d photo into something vaguely acceptable would be greater than those needed to improve the original.

[BARBAKANE]

Thanks for all the replies and pointers. This is turning into a great learning experience for me since this is one of the worst pictures I've tried to restore.

I'm mostly concerned with "grain"...the color cast and color restoration is straight-forward. CARL123 is the only person to really answer my query. Again, GRAIN is the worst culprit here. I'll try the Denoise feature..I wasn't getting the results I wanted when i first used it, but then my mind was probably on my upcoming job interview the next day. I haven't worked full time in almost a year due to "that which shall not be named". THanks again for all the tips.

[carl123]

13 minutes ago, BARBAKANE said:

but then my mind was probably on my upcoming job interview the next day

Well don't keep us in suspense. How did it go?

[BARBAKANE]

I'm expecting an offer today or early next week. Thanks for asking. Will post updates on job and post the picture as asap. Have a great weekend.

[lineweight]

Just my personal opinion but I don't see the grain as a problem really. Just leave it; it's part of the nature of the medium.

And the sharpening applied in the third post is much too aggressive in my opinion. I would just gently reduce the colour cast and not a lot else. What Lagarto has done in the 4th post looks absolutely fine.