Photo Enhancement

[Steve Middleton]

I've been doing photos on granite with some success but a photo I recently rec'd was already enlarged once and lost lots of detail. I found an online service which offered 4 different options for enhancement and it helped some but the faces still have no definition. The original does cover a large area....imagine 5 people wide water skiing and the original photo can't be located. I also have no idea what sort of camera was used. Any input will be appreciated.

[Tim Bateson]

Good question, but unless this is personal to you, no harm in turning work down if you can't provide top shelf results - due to the customer's photos. Crap in, Crap out.

[Brett Luna]

There's a learning curve to successfully upsampling an image in Photoshop and even then, the results can be rather less than you hoped for. Linear features are easier to interpolate than faces and as Tim suggested, original image quality matters. A lot.

I haven't personally tried it but the Let's Enhance (https://letsenhance.io/) website advertises that it can "Remove compression artifacts, upscale 4x and restore quality" using AI technology. Based on my hazy memory of an article I read last year, it might be worth a look.

[Steve Middleton]

I tried that Brett and it helped but I finally accepted that Tim is right. I actually engraved two tiles with modest success and explained the facts(as I understand them) to the customer and told her if she was satisfied with either one fine and if not we'll both move on:)

[John K Jordan]

I tried that Brett and it helped but I finally accepted that Tim is right. I actually engraved two tiles with modest success and explained the facts(as I understand them) to the customer and told her if she was satisfied with either one fine and if not we'll both move on:)

I've enhanced a LOT of photographs over the years for my work and for fun, substituting backgrounds, removing blemishes, distractions or unwanted elements (or people), sharpening and smoothing, fixing faces, opening eyes of the one person in a group photo who blinked. The more difficult cases can take a huge effort. It has to be pretty important to work on some (like the only known photo of great great grandma.)

There are some techniques and Photoshop filters that help, sometimes best used with masks and sometimes used manually "painting" on the mask or with a smoothing or sharpening brush. For simple cases, some things are easy to try. For "hopeless" cases, there is no quick fix. It sometimes boils down to the equivalent of repainting/redrawing the detail while smoothing away the noise. It is very tricky to touch up one area without out making it look out of place on the overall photo. It is easy to do things like sharpen eyes and paint highlights on portraits. If other photos are available it is sometimes possible to substitute sharper faces and such. The success of restoring a basket case depends on the level of artistic ability, the level of expertise, and the time invested. I wouldn't even try without a good tool like Photoshop with layering - I might end up with a dozen layers when adjusting one photo!

I don't know ANYTHING about engraving a photo onto anything.

JKJ

[Steve Middleton]

I was pleasantly surprised yesterday. I finally met with the customer and showed her the two "best" outcomes. She approved the better of the two and ordered two more. Her friend then asked if I had time for her to run home and bring a photo so another order came from the first:)

[John Lifer]

Good for you. I've failed on most of my attempts and for the most part avoid photo engraving. There are those that do a much better job than I.

[Ian Stewart-Koster]

I find Topaz studios offer a couple of upscaling and enhancement plug-ins for Photoshop that have been well worth the cost to me.
(I've been a P'shop user since version 5 in about 1997, so have some editing competence!)
I had one poor scan of a plain postcard sized photo that I enhanced, and lasered at 2.5 metres wide, after some effort - it was really acceptable - but there is 20 years' learning curve, plus some understanding of laser engraving too - and the use of unsharpmask to extremes - nothing about it was easy.