Restoring old photos with the help of ai

[M_J_Helin]

I became interested in retouching old photos. And especially now that various AI programs have emerged. They can be very useful.

So, here's my father's father, circa 1920

I opened the image in Photoshop and sharpened it a bit and added rough colors. After that I threw the picture here:

https://canvas.krea.ai/apps/image/enhancer


The picture came out okay, but the eyes and lips were completely mismatched. And those eyes did not improve by changing any ai parameter. Well, I edited the eyes by hand in photoshop. Similarly, I had to correct the lips and their shape rather briskly. The ear also had to be treated separately, its shape and color were a bit wrong.
I also had to adjust the colors by hand, add them here and there, etc.

After that, I cropped the head from the picture separately, enlarged it and put it here:
https://www.artguru.ai/photo-enhancer/
, where It added more details to the skin etc. After that, I put the head and body back together in Photoshop.
Then, a little more editing with colors and details in Photoshop.

But, without further ado, here's the results:

And cropped:

What have I learned so far? The fact that AI programs can be really good, but not yet ready or foolproof. There is still a lot of manual work to be done.

But, it has been an educational experience!

 

[AlanLichty]

That may have been a fair amount of work but the result is quite impressive. Nice work.

 

[M_J_Helin]

That may have been a fair amount of work but the result is quite impressive. Nice work.

Thanks! Took about three hours. And it's not in the final form yet.

But I'm quite excited and impressed of what can be done! I'll definitely edit some more oldies. I have a few photos of my great grandparents from 1890s...

 

[JimFox]

First off, that's so cool to take old family photos, like this one of your grandfather and improve on it. While it's an old photo, it doesn't necessarily look faded, it looks more like the photographer didn't have a very sharp lens. Which back 100 years ago perhaps happened more, and there weren't as many choices for the photographer?

Thanks for taking us through that whole process. A lot of the great looking AI examples of photography we see today are based on currently living people who have had lot's of photos taken of them. So if in AI I say I want it to generate a photo of Taylor Swift riding on a horse in a pink dress with the sun out. It's probably going to generate a pretty realistic image that may not need any editing, though we will need to check to make sure the AI didn't give Talyor 6 fingers instead of 5.

Did the AI generate the hair okay? It looks like the same waves exist, just now we can see individual strands where in the original that didn't seem visible.

 

[M_J_Helin]

First off, that's so cool to take old family photos, like this one of your grandfather and improve on it. While it's an old photo, it doesn't necessarily look faded, it looks more like the photographer didn't have a very sharp lens. Which back 100 years ago perhaps happened more, and there weren't as many choices for the photographer?

Thanks for taking us through that whole process. A lot of the great looking AI examples of photography we see today are based on currently living people who have had lot's of photos taken of them. So if in AI I say I want it to generate a photo of Taylor Swift riding on a horse in a pink dress with the sun out. It's probably going to generate a pretty realistic image that may not need any editing, though we will need to check to make sure the AI didn't give Talyor 6 fingers instead of 5.

Did the AI generate the hair okay? It looks like the same waves exist, just now we can see individual strands where in the original that didn't seem visible.

Thanks!

I suppose the hair is OK. I heard he had a light brown hair, so I coloured it that way before ai.

Practically, what Ai did was add skin and skin details, eyes and eyebrows and -lashes. And that hair, of course. Basically, generated details.

But as I wrote, the amount of manual editing was rather large. Ai is not yet ready, so to speak. And, perhaps, luckily it isn't.

 

[JimFox]

Thanks!

I suppose the hair is OK. I heard he had a light brown hair, so I coloured it that way before ai.

Practically, what Ai did was add skin and skin details, eyes and eyebrows and -lashes. And that hair, of course. Basically, generated details.

But as I wrote, the amount of manual editing was rather large. Ai is not yet ready, so to speak. And, perhaps, luckily it isn't.

Yeah, I really am not too fond of all of this AI stuff, whether it's in regards to photography or just in general. It seems way to dangerous to me.

 

[M_J_Helin]

I worked with the photo some more. I wasn't satisfied with the eyes etc. In this post I have a couple of pics constructed by ai only. Those pics may clarify the amount of what I did, vs what ai made.

Here's the original.

About ten hours after.

And this isn't the final form yet, I'm afraid...

Well then, what did Ai construct?

And this...

As you can see, ai is.... Well, it works for L'Oréal, apparently. .

There were parts I assumed, the nose and eyebrows for example, using my father's old photos.

I did lot of editing having the original photo as a top layer and then I stretched the color version to look like the original. So, in all, quite a lot of manual effort.

 

[AlanLichty]

A lot of work but an amazing recovery result.

 

[DES]

The steps you've explained and the results you obtained -- all very impressive. I'm not sure the AI generated features are really better than what you did (if I am interpreting the various stages correctly). Even the slightest alteration in some detail can lose a characteristic that is important.

For example, the eyes in the AI-generated images seem much more lifeless and the face looks less "friendly". Just my opinion.