Headhunters

"You have to appreciate that the deforestation of Nias started when they were no longer headhunting!  So it was functional."  Gerard Meijssen often expresses unusual perspectives that make me laugh, but he's seldom wrong.  This photograph was taken in Indonesia.  Here's Gerard's translation of the Tropenmuseum's caption:

Repronegative. The best known island of the range to the west of Sumatra is probably Nias. It was at any rate the biggest and most populous. In the time of the VOC, the island was best known as an exporter of slaves to Atjeh, Padang and Benkoelen. In this way the gentry of the hierarchical Nias earned the gold needed for dowries and the ritual feasts. Nias was a society of warriors who not only enslaved people, they also went head hunting, for instance for the burial ritual of a nobleman. The colonial government tried to end this (P. Boomgaard, 2001). A group of subdued headhunters, Nias “a group of head hunters came to submit themselves” Nias, Northern Sumatra, ca 1920

Go ahead and double check the museum's official metadata if you can read Dutch.  Gerard seems perfectly serious, which is a little hard to stomach if, like me, you envision reruns of Gilligan's Island when the word "headhunters" enters a conversation.

Headhunters really existed.  And after too many formative years of squandering brain cells on the best bad sitcom of all time I'm restoring an actual photograph of headhunters.  Here's a thumbnail version of the image the Tropenmuseum provided at high resolution. 

This was probably photographed in or near the village of Bawemataloeo.  If Gerard is right, these people took heads as trophies in battle.  An effective way to put fear into one's enemies!  Although (per Gilligan's Island) I'm slightly embarrassed to discuss this subject, it is fascinating to see the people who lived that way.  And a relief to know it's historic.  Then I remember the deforestation and my political correctness meter breaks.

This seems to have been digitized from a print on textured paper with directional lighting.  The scratches aren't clear lines: they look like little horizontal nicks stacked over each other.  It's quite difficult to work on.  I've been spending most of my time at 200% and 300% resolution with a healing brush selection three to six pixels wide.  The hardest part of it is repairing this man's face.

When an image has problems that are solvable yet difficult, the mellow approach is best: address the parts that are easy to fix and go work on a different area when it starts to seem frustrating.  Come back after the subconscious has pondered the situation, work on the tough area again, and slowly turn big problems into little problems.

One of the things I do is keep an unaltered version of the image handy and pause occasionally to view sections side by side.  That helps to distinguish photographic damage from real data.  It also sustains my morale through a hard restoration.  Here's how that section looks so far.

Delurking in the shadows

Everyone likes the person who can make a portrait look better.  A tool in Photoshop called Shadow/Highlight that is equally useful whether the portrait is a nineteenth century engraving or a twenty-first century photograph.  Today we'll put that tool to use in both situations.

Our first example depicts Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky who was one of the influential legislators of the nineteenth century.  The edit at the top of this post was done by a classical guitarist who volunteers for Wikipedia under the username Jujutacular.  Jujutacular has also uploaded several musical performances under free license and fellow editors have selected his work as featured sounds.  An example of Jujutacular at guitar is here; it plays best on the Firefox browser.  Jujutacular also restores historic images and yesterday I helped him with the image edit, which he had done from this Library of Congress original.

Jujutacular's dirt and scratch removal was very careful, yet the image remains badly faded.  Here's what that fade looks like on a histogram.  A histogram assigns all the pixels on an image a brightness rating from 0 (for black) to 255 (pure white).  Faded images lose data at the left and right ends of the graph.

Image editing programs offer several ways to correct for fade.  The Shadow/Highlight tool in Photoshop is a powerful way to coax detail out of the shadows.

This tool has three sets of sliders.  The top section controls shadows and the middle controls highlights.  Those are the only two sections we'll need for today.  The top bar in each section, "Amount" controls the amount of enhancement.  The "Tonal Width" and "Radius" bars control the data selected for enhancement.

The shadow/highlight tool shows previews in real time.  So the best way to get familiar with it is to open it up and play around with a few images.  A good fade correction brings out the information you want to see without overpowering changes.

The final version of the Henry Clay engraving had minimal editing after the Shadow/Highlight adjustment.  Notice how much clearer it becomes.

Although I admire the detail of this engraving, overall it's a period piece not quite to my taste.  The postures are stiff and theatrical.  He looks more like a third rate actor playing a senator than an actual senator.  Yet it's a good example of an artistic style that was popular during his career.  Have a look and we'll move on to a twenty-first century portrait.

One type of problem that's probably happened to everybody is the indoor portrait taken next to a bright window.  The human eye adjusts to brightness differences better than any camera.  So this type of pose usually seems like it ought to look fine but gives disappointing results.  Here's an example with Philippe Beaudette who works for the Wikimedia Foundation.

Poor Phillippe looks like he hasn't been outdoors in a month.  He doesn't really live in a cave; it's just the lighting.  The first edit was a mild perspective crop to take out distracting architectural elements at left and right.

Then I wanted to put texture and color back into his face, but not too much.  The aim is to give his forehead definition without exaggerating contours so much that the skin looks blemished.  On the highlight slider an unusually large radius setting (92 pixels) produced a pleasing effect.  The edits to the shadow mostly brought out details in his sweater and hair.  I don't want to bring out very much of the shadows, though, because too much could produce the dreaded five o'clock shadow.

Unfortunately the current version of GIMP doesn't have an equivalent editing tool to Photoshop's Shadow/Highlight feature.  GIMP users can coax somewhat similar effects from the Curves tool.

Afterward I increased yellow by a small amount in the midtones and highlights, then boosted the saturation slightly.  Very small increases to saturation often make a subject look healthier. The edits almost gave him a tan.

Shades of gray

How do you color balance a black and white image?  Today's restoration is an Egyptian camel transport photographed at Mount Olivet near Jerusalem in 1918.  It was scanned from a print in an old album.  Paper tends to get deficient in blue as it ages.  Old photographic prints turn color in similar ways to old newspapers.  So this photograph appears to be shades of brown; what do you do about that?

Some people think that black and white photography ought to look black and white. Others prefer sepia tones.  We probably can't resolve differences of taste, but it's worth a look at what happens with both approaches.  They each have their shortcomings.  You'll also see the solution that I think works best.

Desaturation is a simple edit.  Here's a screen shot of how to perform it in Photoshop.

If you're editing in GIMP the Desaturate option is on the Colors menu.  Here's the result you'll get in either program.

This may be totally justifiable on technical grounds, but desaturation tends to convey an emotional coldness.  The original is a gorgeous panorama.  This doesn't have the same appeal; I don't feel the urge to lose myself in it the way I did with the original.

So why not keep those warm sepias just as they are?  If you're really restoring the image that won't be feasible.  The trouble develops when you work with the histogram.  Without getting too technical about it, old images usually fade.  And when you correct for that fade (in terms of brightness), any discoloration will seem to be intensified.  As a demonstration we'll do a simple levels adjustment on a partially restored version of this image.

Notice how artificial this looks.  This photograph was well preserved and had a good histogram for something ninety years old.  In an average print of similar age those browns could turn bright orange.

One possible solution is to leave both the histogram and the colors alone, and to only perform dirt and scratch removal.  That would keep the sepias untouched but lose whatever detail might be recovered from the shadows.  My solution is a compromise: I worked on the histogram with the Photoshop Curves tool (which is a more sophisicated cousin to Levels), then I adjusted the color balance by hand and did a partial desaturation.

Since old paper is deficient in blue, a color balance adds blue.  This means moving the bottom slider toward blue and the top slider toward cyan.  Photoshop allows the user to adjust highlights, midtones, and shadows differently.  I like to start with highlights because usually blue is more deficient in highlights.  That makes sense if you think of paper prints turning color like old newspapers: the dark areas have more ink, which conceals some of the change that occurs in the paper.

For this adjustment I moved the sliders four units toward cyan and blue in the highlights, then three units toward cyan and two toward blue in midtones, and one unit each in shadows.  Don't worry too much about remembering those exact numbers.  When you're editing just use the preview function and adjust the settings until they feel right.

Next I reduced saturation in the Hue/Saturation dialog.  This lets an editor take out some of the color while still leaving enough to to keep that emotional allure.  The sepias won't be overwhelming anymore, but they're still there.

The equivalent editing tools can be accessed in GIMP by choosing Layers >  Colors > Color Balance for color edits, and Layers > Colors > Hue-Saturation.

Here's the end result of my edits.  You might prefer a slightly different final version.  Photography is an art; so is digital image restoration.  The unedited Library of Congress file is available here.  Soon I'll be uploading my work on the image to Wikimedia Commons including an interim edit that doesn't include my final changes to the histogram, color balance, or saturation.  Feel free to work with that if you'd prefer something a little different.

Talk like a Pittsburgh Pirate

There's a wonderful Wikipedia editor named James Ringold who puts his volunteer time into baseball articles.  He edits as Staxringold and recently nominated a featured topic about Major League Baseball awards where seventeen of the eighteen articles are featured articles. It really shows how much the baseball editors put into their work.  When James restores images he's equally diligent; he recently completed work on a poster about the Pittsburgh Pirates' 1909 National League championship.  That's Honus Wagner at the upper right corner next to the pennant.  The full resolution restoration is available here; it makes an interesting comparison against the original.

Each day Wikipedia's main page runs a section called Picture of the Day.  Scroll about halfway down the page to see it.  You can see from next month's upcoming schedule that Babe Ruth will be on the main page on his birthday, February 6.  Sometimes special occasions get scheduled per request.

James and I both think the Pittsburgh Pirates would be perfect for International Talk Like a Pirate Day.  If you'd like a peek under the hood at how Wikipedia operates, here's our conversation with the Picture of the Day director:

POTD request for September 19

Arrrrr!

Seems perfect for Talk Like a Pirate Day. ;) Durova⁴⁰¹ 22:58, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

"Talk like a Pittsburgh Pirate"? Heh. I think there's another pirate-themed FP lying about, however. howcheng {chat} 23:55, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

• NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! :) Staxringold _talk^contribs 01:46, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
  

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Many thanks to the Library of Congress for making these fine images available to the public at high resolution.

Camera tilt

Today's edit techniques are equally useful whether the photograph depicts a World War I battleship or yesterday's birthday party.  You're going to like this if you're new to digital editing and want good skills that are quick, easy, and make your friends think you're an expert.

This ship is the USS New Jersey (BB-16), painted with camouflage in 1918.  It's one of the subjects of a Wikipedia content drive called Operation Majestic Titan, which is working to provide good articles about every battleship ever built.  An administrator who works with that project, The ed17, thought this photograph might have the quality to become a featured picture.

Ed asked me for help after the first reviewer noticed how tilted the horizon is.  He didn't think the defenseimagery.mil image was high enough resolution to merit a full restoration--he just couldn't figure a good way to correct this tilt. Ed's dilemma was that he had no leeway.  The photograph already cuts off part of the ship's superstructure.  He didn't want to lose any more information.

If the solution looks confusing at first, smile and think how much it will impress your friends. 

The first thing to do is straighten that horizon: this image needed two degrees counterclockwise rotation.  That's why the framing looks tilted within a black box.  The next step is the crop.  The dotted lines on this screen shot show where the crop was about to happen.

Ed understood the basic mechanics of editing but he wasn't sure how to apply them to this situation.  This image had enough room to crop left and right and a little too much foreground, but that superstructure left no good choice at the top of the frame.

Obviously we aren't going to propose a featured picture candidate with black triangles in the sky, but that's just sky.  We can patch empty sky. 

These edits used the clone stamp and then the healing brush to blend a natural effect. Altogether it took less than five minutes to perform the rotation, crop, and the repair on the sky.

If you don't already own software that has these features, an open source program called GIMP can do it.  The Wikipedia article about GIMP includes external links for download and tutorial.

And if you're more likely to edit birthday party photos than World War I history, a good habit to get into is to zoom out a little while shooting.  The editing is much easier when all four sides of an image have enough room to rotate and crop.