Photoshop (or standalone program) to clean up photos

[brother_van]

Hello,

I have tried several different photoshop plugins (Akvis retoucher, Image doctor, and kodak) to retouch, remove noise and clean up my old photos. Akvis and image doctor just distort my images into what looks like a picaso painting. Kodak on the other hand really wasnt what I wanted. I'm hoping someone here can reccommend a program or plugin to clean up some of my old photos.

Thanks,

bro_van

[Draconian Guppy]

Well what i've used in conjuction with photoshop is Neat Image and Noise Ninja, which are both for noise removal and sharpening. Though with watery picaso images the problem is in chair not in computer. It really doesn't matter what software you use, if you apply too much noise reduction + over sharpen you're going to get overprocessed images, basically you have to test/try again until you get an acceptable finish. Unsharp mask is pretty good in photoshop if you ask me.

Also if i'm feeling lazy, i'll just remove noise and sharpen in Lightroom (Which IIRC uses the same engine as photoshop).

[brother_van]

On akvis and image doctor, i used the default settings. Guess ill play around with em and see what I can do. I'll take a look at the programs you mentioned. Thank You.

[Draconian Guppy]

Sorry no experience on akvis nor image doctor, but usually default settings should be fine. You should post your images, so you could get more input on how they look. Also I don't recall which one ( Noise Ninja or neatimage) has a standalone program.

[brother_van]

Here are the three examples:

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/23920247@N04/4407556143/" title="Mining 2 by brother_van, on Flickr"><img src="https://farm5.static.flickr.com/4024/4407556143_49f167477c.jpg" width="500" height="352" alt="Mining 2" /></a>

As you can see its more than just noise, im also needing to clean up scratches and blemishes.

[Draconian Guppy]

Here are the three examples:

As you can see its more than just noise, im also needing to clean up scratches and blemishes.

Well i'm no photo restauration specialist, but most of the blemishes can be fixed with clone/spot heal in photoshop. Though keeping detail in some is a little out of my area, here's my go at it and i'm at best a photoshop noob, maybe someone else can help too :)

All I did was use spot healer, clone tool, contrast/shadow detail a bit of sharpening and some noise removal in photoshop, worth noting though, noise reduction did pretty much nothing.

Before:

After:

And this is my quick go at it, i'm pretty sure someone who was a lot more experience in photoshop might be able to do a better job, for example if you notice the left corner you can see to shades of color, barely, but it's there. Maybe posting in the graphics section might get you some help, I know I have :)