Removing pen marks form a photo?

cursai

Hi, Ive been trying to remove these pen marks for yonks but cant seem to get it right.
Have used spot healing, clone tool and even tried to isolate the colour and reduce it.
Im only an amateur at photoshop and have no idea how to use layers etc...Could anybody help or give guidance.

Reoil

Layers don't matter here.
To fix this, it would be a case of zooming in at the highest resolution and spending a lot of time going over it very slowly.

Falcon L

I'm probably as clueless as any. Can the pen marks not be removed from the original photograph?

Roosterreid

Im not an expert on photoshop, rather an enthusiastic amateur but do think this could be done (with a lot of patience) and the clone tool. The key is to make your selection tool (the SQUARE brackets allow you to change the size) as small as is feasible and then the sample area to be cloned should be as close to the area to be repaired as possible.

Trying to rush a job and repairing even what seem like small areas at a time can simply make it look crap.... work in a super small scale and you'll get there.

If I get free time later, I'll have a quick look for you.... cheers

cursai

Reoil wrote: »

Layers don't matter here.
To fix this, it would be a case of zooming in at the highest resolution and spending a lot of time going over it very slowly.

Would that be the only way. Is there any way of isolating the marks and replacing them. Ive tried the color range trick but am having no luck.

Roosterreid

cursai wrote: »

Would that be the only way. Is there any way of isolating the marks and replacing them. Ive tried the color range trick but am having no luck.

There is no quick fix I'm afraid..... there are too many textures, tones, contrasts etc.

I have just opened this in GIMP and I can clean up the forehead of the girl in the centre back without too much trouble. Hair is easier as it's less obvious.

It's just going to take time.

Reoil

cursai wrote: »

Would that be the only way. Is there any way of isolating the marks and replacing them. Ive tried the color range trick but am having no luck.

I'd say the clone and heal tool would be the only way.
This took me a wee while to do. :-)
The original image was just slightly larger than a postage stamp.

cursai

Reoil wrote: »

I'd say the clone and heal tool would be the only way.
This took me a wee while to do. :-)
The original image was just slightly larger than a postage stamp.

That's the job alright.

Wabbit Ears

If it were me and that Photo Id first scan it with the highest resolution scanner I can. Some photo service places have pretty good quality scanners.

This is a backup as, if by trying to clean the actual photo you end up wrecking it. ( TBH Its pretty wrecked anyway!)

Then Id try to remove as the ink using pure iso alcohol (otherwise known as tape cleaner, CD cleaning solution, Can be got in Maplins) and Qtips. It test if it was damaging the photo in a far corner.

After Id removed as much ink as possible Id scan it again and work on that in Photoshop.

ScumLord

Reoil wrote: »

Layers don't matter here.

:eek: Always layers. You don't need to use the clone tool directly onto the photo. Make a new layer above and clone onto that.

You could isolate the area you want to work on with the selection tool so that you don't have to be so careful. Drop down the opacity and flow of the clone brush so you can blend each pass in better. Don't be afraid to go somewhere else on the face other than directly beside the area you want to clone over.

frozenfrozen

you could just clean up one of the faces and paste it over all of them to save some time

flyingsnail

While not ideal you might consider going black and white, a lot of the colour and tone matching problems are eased when the colour is not such a big problem.

While this is over done for illustration you can see the effect of playing with the reds in a black and white image where I have done no cloning

endacl

Looks like a mountain of tedious work, OP. I'd be photoshoppin' brand new faces in from other pictures...

Dramatik

I think what flyingsnail posted might be your best option eg. to go black and white. I would separate it into 6 parts working on the hair and face of each person separately. I would copy the image twice, turn one into black and white then the other I would adjust the colour sliders till I could see the pen the least as flyingsnail has done. I would then apply a gasussian blur to blend the remaining pen marks and make them less noticeable. Once that was done I would place the unedited black and white picture over the edited one and then use the eraser tool with about 50% opacity and gently erase over the lines to let the edited picture show. Once that was done I'd then tweak both edited and unedited versions with levels to try and match the tones in both.

cursai

Dramatik wrote: »

I think what flyingsnail posted might be your best option eg. to go black and white. I would separate it into 6 parts working on the hair and face of each person separately. I would copy the image twice, turn one into black and white then the other I would adjust the colour sliders till I could see the pen the least as flyingsnail has done. I would then apply a gasussian blur to blend the remaining pen marks and make them less noticeable. Once that was done I would place the unedited black and white picture over the edited one and then use the eraser tool with about 50% opacity and gently erase over the lines to let the edited picture show. Once that was done I'd then tweak both edited and unedited versions with levels to try and match the tones in both.

Hoping to keep it in colour. Was for an event last weekend but couldnt use it. ill put it in my long term goals now. I WILL get there.