affinity photo Where are the beautiful days?

[AdamStanislav]

Where are the beautiful days? Where are the sleigh rides till dawn? Where are the tender moments of splendor, where have they gone?

Because I had to move due to a fire making our building uninhabitable, I am actually finding many things I forgot I had (and cannot find things I know I have). One of them was a photograph of me  and of a friend from our visit to a TV station. That was in 1993, when I was 43.

I scanned a small part of the picture at 2400 ppi and 48 bpp to an uncompressed TIFF using my Epson V750 Pro scanner. The result had many blemishes, so I cleaned the scanner glass with compressed air (the scanner had been inside a storage place ever since the fire until now) and took several other scans. That helped, but there was still a dust hole in the scan, plus two scratches.

I opened the result in Affinity Photo and applied Filters/Noise/Dust & Scratches... That removed the dust very nicely, but there still were two scratches. They were on the shirt, so it would not be the end of the world if I could not remove them. But I noticed AP has a Blemish Removal Tool. I used it on the two scratches. At first it just broke the scratches into smaller pieces and moved those around, but eventually it removed the scratches altogether.

The result looks pretty good, especially considering it is a scan of a small region of a photo print for which I do not have the negative.

I exported it to another TIFF, and also to JPG with both, the height and the width, reduced to 50%:

But yes, where are the beautiful days? Why do we have to get old?

[MmmMaarten]

@AdamStanislav Yeah, time is moving fast (faster when you're older)! Sad to read you had to move because of a fire, hope everybody's alright and you managed to save the most important things.

[smadell]

@AdamStanislav - I just wanted to let you know that I really like your opening lyric. Lara would be proud…