Methods of healing scans from fungus damaged transparencies

[Bill_f]

I offered to scan someone's precious memories (35mm transparencies) from their time in 1970s and 80s Papua New Guinea. My Minolta Dimage Scan dual III did sterling work but, unfortunately, virtually all the 48 transparencies show, often extensive, fungal growth with many spores and hyphae. The spores are time consuming to remove using the inpainting brush but the hyphae can be a nightmare - thank goodness for Apple Pencil which at least made in bearable. I have managed mainly with the inpainting brush with some judicious use of the clone brush and patch tool. Has anybody any tips to make this easier? Some Jpg screen grabs of magnified areas of images attached.

  

[Minus44]

Would you be willing to upload a TIFF of an entire slide so members can play around with it in the effort to help with a technique that might be helpful?  

[DM1]

A good start is to use the inpainting brush to remove major blemishes and lines on face and sky. If you add a pixel layer and select inpainting tool then set the context menu to sample current level and below. Alternatively duplicate the layer and paint directly on the duplicate. Edit: For a better result choose a smooth round brush and set the brush hardness to 100% (I just noticed I used the current brush and neglected to reset it).

 

[DM1]

With the out of focus background another option is to add a dust filter or similar, add a mask to the filter and paint black (on the mask layer), over the features you want to retain as sharp. Alternatively select features eg face), invert selection and add the filter to the selection. With face selected, maybe add a high pass filter (set to Linear Light blend mode) to give it a bit more sharpness. Finish with inpainting or clone to remove any final unwanted marks.

Quick and dirty before and after with layers showing to give you an idea re workflow.

 

[Minus44]

My preferred method for this sort of retouching job is to use one of the Noise filters such as the Dust & Scratches tools (I LOVE this tool... it's invaluable for retouching jobs like this). It's a bit more elegant and less time-consuming than chasing after all those filaments with the Inpainting Brush.

You can experiment with the Radius and Tolerance parameters to control the amount of reduction you need. Next you can hit the larger blobs of dust with the Inpainting Brush, but this shouldn't take long at all. 

Finally, if needed, you can use any number of sharpening or clarity techniques to dress it up a bit again. 

 

EDIT: LOL!! I see @DM1 and I are on the same track. As usual, he's posted a few minutes prior to my own.    

[DM1]

9 hours ago, Bill_f said:

Has anybody any tips to make this easier?

A median blur on its own does a fairly good job on the spores and Haphai where the background focus is not a concern. Might help with some of the slides. You could use it with some judicious masking to restrict its effect to specific areas. Looks like you are in for a tedious  few hours. 

[Bill_f]

11 hours ago, Ulysses said:

Would you be willing to upload a TIFF of an entire slide so members can play around with it in the effort to help with a technique that might be helpful?  

Thanks for commenting. As the pictures are not my property but merely something I am working on for a friend the whole slide is not possible although I could upload more extensive crops as tifs.

[Bill_f]

8 hours ago, DM1 said:

A good start is to use the inpainting brush to remove major blemishes and lines on face and sky. If you add a pixel layer and select inpainting tool then set the context menu to sample current level and below.

Thank you. This is exactly the method I have been employing but it is very long-winded!

[DM1]

@Bill_f Unfortunately there is no magic bullet, the damage on the samples was fairly severe and I was surprised how well inpainting performed. I would access them carefully to determine which ones are worth the effort. In some cases it may be easier to completely replace backgrounds such as sky and clouds, then add some noise to the new background to help blend them in. I have been restoring scans of some very old family photos some dating back to early 1900's. The photos were in poor condition and the scanner used was a cheapie. Talk about a 'labour of love', but the results so far are quite pleasing. It's amazing what this software can do. Anyway have fun!

Perhaps you could teach your friend how to use Affinity Photo and let him or her share the pain. 

[Bill_f]

7 hours ago, Ulysses said:

EDIT: LOL!! I see @DM1 and I are on the same track. As usual, he's posted a few minutes prior to my own.    

Thank you again Ulysses and DM1 for taking the time to comment. This is extremely helpful to a novice Affinity user like myself. You have taught me a lot in a few short posts especially to remember to use correct brush for inpainting tool and how to use dust and scratch filters and masks effectively. I'll certainly give the filter and masks a try (each slide was taking about 4 hours with just inpainting etc and the idea was not to "beautify" the original transparency just to remove the fungus)

[Bill_f]

30 minutes ago, DM1 said:

@Bill_f Unfortunately there is no magic bullet, the damage on the samples was fairly severe and I was surprised how well inpainting performed. I would access them carefully to determine which ones are worth the effort. In some cases it may be easier to completely replace backgrounds such as sky and clouds, then add some noise to the new background to help blend them in. I have been restoring scans of some very old family photos some dating back to early 1900's. The photos were in poor condition and the scanner used was a cheapie. Talk about a 'labour of love', but the results so far are quite pleasing. It's amazing what this software can do. Anyway have fun!

Perhaps you could teach your friend how to use Affinity Photo and let him or her share the pain. 

Thank you again Ulysses and DM1 for taking the time to comment.It has been extremely helpful.  Now in her 70s she selected these 48 slides from many hundreds (?thousands) as memories of her time in that country working with her dentist husband. Every slide has the fungus in the gelatine layer of the transparency (so probably her whole collection). She chose them as a mixture to show that they worked with real people with personality and not just "National Geographic cover-type" exotic folk. So I just have to work with the slides she has given me - with their gritty everyday experiences including dental extractions, huge machines ripping out forest as well as slaughtering and gutting of a pig for a feast!

[Minus44]

Glad to help, @Bill_f. And the samples you provided were perfectly fine for demonstrating the problem as well as a potential solution.

The combo of Dust & Scratches plus some judicious Inpainting Brush should more than take care of this for her, while simplifying the process for you . Have fun!