Challenge ;-) Fixing an extremly over exposed old portrait photo?

[Franzi von Fragenfeld]

Hi,

I am trying to fix an old image of my grandma which already died in the 1960ies. Unfortunately I never met her.
I have only one picture of her and tried to give her back some skincolour, but so far without success.
Is there anyone who has an idea how to approach this in Affinity Photo?

Btw. While she is reasonably young on the photo, it should be mentioned, that her hair was actually really white or almost white with a tiny (!) hint of dark blonde despite her age.

Maybe someone knows how to do this and share their know how? That would be so nice.

Thank you!

[loukash]

The most important step is step 1:

1. Make sure to scan on a 48-bit scanner that can save as 48-bit image (not all scanners can do that: some will scan internally in 48-bit but save only as 24-bit). That will ensure that you'll have as many color nuances as only possible, even those not immediately visible.

[NotMyFault]

Hi Franzi,

there is no way to re-gain outblown highlights from the image you've uploaded. The (still visible) colors are way off and needs to be corrected. Unfortunately, the uploaded image has poor resulution, only 8 bit color depth, severe jpeg artefacts and other issues.

If you have access to the original printed photo or even better film roll, please try to get a scan in higher quality first. You will need either a good scanner, a RAW capable camera, or a friend or professional scan service. Current smartphones and camera apps (halide, moment) may work, too.

For scan and export, choose:

• highest possible resolution (at least 4000x3000 pixel)
• good lighting
• 16 bit color depth per channel (48 bit depth in total for some scanner software)
• Export as TIFF format or PDF, uncompressed or with lossless compression (no lossy compression)

Never the less, even if you can't recover the original outblown skin colors, you may be able to fake them. Just paint them in with a brush, or a color gradient.

 

Cheers,

Timo

[carl123]

There are various colourizer websites that would be a good starting point for this. You can then refine as needed

 

 

[Franzi von Fragenfeld]

Thanks everyone, I'll proceed with a better scan & than try a coloring site.
Carl, did you use one of those, can you recommend one??
If yes, which one did you use, that looks already very nice. Thank you!

[carl123]

2 minutes ago, Franzi von Fragenfeld said:

Carl, did you use one of those, can you recommend one??

This one did a fairly decent job - a lot of others failed miserably,

https://hotpot.ai/colorize-picture  (using a colorization factor of 12)

 

[Franzi von Fragenfeld]

Thank you!

[Andy05]

1 hour ago, carl123 said:

This one did a fairly decent job - a lot of others failed miserably,

That quote is so absolutely true! I also found out that the results vary a lot depending on the motive. There's no "best AI" for all kind of images. One really should try multiple pages and compare the results.