~~~~~~PHOTOSHOP:Before & After~~~~~~
~~Daguerreotype Repair~~
This is John William Sheffer, also known as Pop, my great-grandfather. He was born near York, Pennsylvania and moved to Baltimore where he worked as an accountant. He married an Irish orphan, Mary Ella Knight, and they built a house on Forest Park Avenue where my Dad grew up and I spent many wonderful summers.
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The glass covering the image is spotted with dust and debris on the inside; the daguerreotpye plate behind the glass is peeling and darkened. The case was cropped in order to focus on the image that was then enlarged to see the damage. Following Eismann's directions for dust removal, I duplicated the background layer and worked from there. The best procedure was creating numerous new layers for a wide variety of tools so I could switch the individual layers off and on to see what was more effective. I used the healing brush tool on Pop's face, shirt front and background to remove the dust and cloudy spots under the glass. The suit had red and green pixels that were somethat easier to remove with the clone tool but the jacket color itself could not be improved. I was able to replace the parts of the sleeve where the image had crumbled; however, adding color to this image was not as effective as when we worked on the daguerreotype in class. Adding color made the coat look worse around the missing parts and the ring, watch fob and buttons looked better without extra gilding; there was either not enough pixels pinpointed or it would not show up.Using the clone tool on the jacket and the fade healing brush on the edges close to the frame provided background improvements without residual marks left behind, unlike the repair work on the jacket. After getting rid of the dust and other marks, the best fix for this image was adjusting the levels; I ended up bringing the Brightness down to -1 and the Contrast up to +3. I was surprised to find out how pink his cheeks were and assume the color was added to the image or Pop wore rouge.
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Similar procedures were followed for another family daguerreotype, Pop's brother Harry, except the dust and spots under the glass were not removed with the healing tools. Instead, I used the elliptical marquee tool to draw the oval shape; inverted the selection; and, then, re-matted the oval image as the original frame was in poor condition. His hair was colored his natural red, his pupils were colored (one better than the other), and some white was added to his collar. Somewhere, between these two edited photos is a happy medium for restoring old daguerreotypes with Photoshop.
~~Really Old Family Photos~~
My sister and I were always at the beach or pool and the photograph on the left looked as sunburned as we were when we came home. This was taken fifty years ago; both the photograph and I are paying the price for all that sun. The Photoshop version is less than satisfactory but it is better than the original. At first, I scanned the original as a black and white, then grayscale, before adding color. That did not work so I went back to the RGB color mode and then worked Photoshop levels magic.Using the RGB channels provided information to find the original color combination's nearest match. I cropped the rough edges and also straightened the original photo somewhat to work out the warped shape.This in fact lengthened the original copy and created a better picture. I also used the marquee tool on this to separate the figures from the background and then attempted to slightly feather the background. It does not show up on the web image as well as it does on Photoshop but feathering the background allowed the girls to stand out from the clutter behind them. It was worth doing the work on a poor choice as my sister will hate the enormous print sent to her for her birthday.
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©maureen m. guignon 2007.