Old Newspaper photo needs enhancing

lurker2000

I'm looking for a contact link to a person/company who can enhance an old newspaper photo to an acceptable quality for possible publishing in a book. Can anyone help with suggestions?

magicbastarder

you're not starting with a great source if it's an old newspaper photo. while dust, creases etc. can be catered for in photoshop, there's only so far that sharpening can go. newspaper photos are a hell of a different beast than old prints, too.
do you even have a phone photo of the image?

lurker2000

I don't have the actual newspaper myself - someone sent me a scanned copy of it .... from 1960 so slightly careworn and typical bad quality of a newspaper ...

brightspark

Have you tried contacting the newspaper, they might have an original photograph or know the photographer.

You will need to find out who owns the copyright anyway.

magicbastarder

re copyright, how old a newspaper are we talking about?

lurker2000

Thanks for your reply, firstly the newspaper is no longer in existence and in reprinting it my citation would refer to the Newspapers name and date of photo. The photo is of military/historical interest and is not reprinted in other books or on the net. It was taken at a funeral of a WW2 combatant in 1960. The mourners walking to the grave side have amongst them many who would be familiar names in my area of interest and their post war appearances would have been very few and far between, making this photo quite unique. Therefore I would like to enhance it to a sharper quality which I am presuming is possible with modern technology but I lack any knowledge in this area to know for sure.

brightspark

Could the newspaper have merged or been taken over by another publisher that might hold records of earlier publications ?

While damaged photos etc can be touched up and enhanced a little if the information isn't in the original image no amount of processing is going to create it.

CabanSail

Sometimes the archives are donated to a National Library. It may be worth asking especially if you know the date of the event and/or publication.

lurker2000

No the paper was a specific niche one but yes I do believe the local historic archives will have it as I saw another one from the same event in their collection ... I did write to the archives but never got a reply ... The problem may be that a funeral is considered a private event or perhaps they are suspicious of my interest ... The funeral being a 'Nazi' one ... However, my interest is purely academic . Tks for all replies .... I'm taking it that there is no way to enhance this photo in the format I have it so.

pete4130

Generally, newspapers, especially from 1960 would use a pretty low dpi for their images. Newspapers are old tech. using large dots on unrefined paper for people to read. The images would have been printed the same way. Even a high res scan of the original paper would be a high res scan of a low res image. The only way to get a decent image for larger publication would be to pbtain the original print/negative and work with that.

scamalert

think i heard that even modern newspapers use 75dpi if remember correctly,so very low ball park would be for smth that was printed in 60s,but depending on size of newspaper picture theres always magic to be made by photoshop proffesionals,only issue is to redo it that it would be authentic and not visible that touch ups or paint over was used,which is a lot of work depending on detail and can result in wax like look.not very expensive but last resort if original cant be gotten.

lurker2000

Thanks for all info posted....much appreciated.

CabanSail

When you see a TV show where they do the "enhance that image" thing and a socially awkward guy in thick glasses hits a couple of keys and then a high resolution image appears from a small reflection in the corner of a CCTV frame which miraculously solves the case it is complete crap.

pullandbang

CabanSail wrote: »

When you see a TV show where they do the "enhance that image" thing and a socially awkward guy in thick glasses hits a couple of keys and then a high resolution image appears from a small reflection in the corner of a CCTV frame which miraculously solves the case it is complete crap.

Ah jaysus, so that scene in Bladerunner where Harrison Ford enhances the image from the mirror reflection wasn't true? :eek:

CabanSail

Well that was true as it was a documentary.

DaireQuinlan

CabanSail wrote: »

Well that was true as it was a documentary.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/reflected-hidden-faces-in-photographs-revealed-in-pupil

magicbastarder

he's talking about doing this with instagram photos - does instagram allow such high res photos to be uploaded?

Jack Killian

lurker2000 wrote: »

Therefore I would like to enhance it to a sharper quality which I am presuming is possible with modern technology but I lack any knowledge in this area to know for sure.

Unfortunately not, on 2 fronts:

1) Newspaper printing uses lower DPI and different printing - if you look at a "photo" in a newspaper you can see the colour dots that combine to give the colour effect; it's not like the tiny dots that make up an actual photo

2) Interpolation (which "guesses / fills in" the extra dots when you enlarge a photo) fails into a blurry mess if the image is enlarged too much, and a web version will be very low res to begin with. Add in an old unsharp / blurry photo to begin with (as distinct from a high-res modern photo) and the interpolation has even less to base its guesswork on.

There's a little-known trick in Photoshop whereby repeatedly enlarging a photo by 10% works better than increasing it all in one go, but it won't work for a newspaper print.

I guess it all depends on your target and the importance of the photo; if you heard a common-enough track on the radio with vinyl crackles, it'd be horrendous, because the lack of quality would be out of place, but if you heard a rare one that was almost never played then the fact that it was great to hear it would compensate somewhat for the lack of quality.

Jack Killian

magicbastarder wrote: »

he's talking about doing this with instagram photos - does instagram allow such high res photos to be uploaded?

Possibly allows them to be uploaded, but there's no guarantee that Instagram keeps the original - it may server-side resample it.

lurker2000

Thanks JK ,..very helpful albeit more than a tad disappointing .....

ScumLord

It would be possible to redraw the image from the crappy newspaper print. Make a sort of posterized version. Lots of work, you'll lose a heap of detail but it would give an idea of what was in the photo.