Hi,

On 29.1.2016 at 8:52 AM Oulefty wrote:

Black and White Yearbook pictures that people have signed their name across their face. Wondering if there is a way to remove whatever they wrote on the picture? have tried using various tools such as the healing tool but; writing across the face especially over the eyes prove to be problematic. Does anyone know a method that works to remove the writing and leave the face intact?

Attachments: * http://www.gimpusers.com/system/attachments/234/original/Face.jpg

I would try the Clone brush first, then the Healing brush. Another option is
1. select the writing, feather the selection's edges, 2. desaturate with the Hue-Saturation-Tool or the Colorize-Tool, 3. brighten/darken (or dodge/burn) to match the surrounding areas. Also the Resynthesizer plug-in is a choice, tho I think as the background is homogeneous, the former tools with some practice are sufficient.

Greetings

Sven

On Fri, 2016-01-29 at 08:52 +0100, oulefty wrote:

Black and White Yearbook pictures that people have signed their name across their face. Wondering if there is a way to remove whatever they wrote on the picture?

It's difficult. Or at least it takes practice and patience.

Tricks like coying an eye and using flip and perspective and curves and maybe a gradient fill over it in Darken mode (or dodge/burn with a large brush) to match the "damaged" eye as much as possible, and a layer mask to show the replacement "eye" as little as possible. In the example you showed this isn't necessary though.

If it came from print, scan the picture at a reasonably high resolution - at least 300dpi but maybe 1200 - so you can get closer to the pen strokes and so the jpeg artifacts won't be a problem. Ideally scan to png and not jpeg.

You can select by colour to get all of the green pen and then use colour balance curves, etc on the feathered selection. First copy and paste as new layer, or duplicate the whole layer, so you can still access the original.

It's almost always best to start with tools that will affect large areas, e.g. all the green, at the same time.

There are actually books on restoring photos, e.g. "Digital restoration from start to finish" although they tend to assume you're using Adobe PhotoShop.

Liam

Liam R. E. Quin 
http://www.holoweb.net/~liam
Words & Pictures From Old Books - www.fromoldbooks.org
The barefoot typographer

El sáb, 30-01-2016 a las 15:53 -0500, Liam R. E. Quin escribió:

On Fri, 2016-01-29 at 08:52 +0100, oulefty wrote:

Black and White Yearbook pictures that people have signed their name
across their face. Wondering if there is a way to remove whatever they wrote on the picture?

Painting a selection over the signatures and using resynthesize to reconstruct the pixels behind the strokes could work, at least partially, then some manual healing/cloning.

Gez.