How To Fix a JPEG with Lines

I'm fairly new to Photoshop, and was recently given a photo taken from a disposable camera that is completely fuzzy and has lines throughout the entire photo. It will eventually be put into powerpoint (not printed). My coworkers say there is no way to get rid of the lines, but I'm confident there's a way to make the photo look at least somewhat decent. Any advice?

Angela

[terrie]

It's probably small enough (in mb) to post here or perhaps on a web page for us to take a look at and give you some advice????

Terrie

Originally Posted by terrie

It's probably small enough (in mb) to post here or perhaps on a web page for us to take a look at and give you some advice????

Terrie

The file is too large to upload it here. :-/

[Andrew B.]

The jpg files size limits here set with the idea that people will click and display them right here. But files that are not simply for display (such as yours) can be placed into a standard archive format (zip, sit, or hqx) to upload here. The file size limits are much higher for these formats, and I think you will have no problem. But if you do, please let us know. We want to get this board set up right to handle situations like this.

[LoisWakeman]

Angela, it is very hard to give advice without seeing what the lines are: are you talking about JPEG blockiness caused by too-high compression (for which there is no fix), or moiré, or scratches/dirt on the scan, for which there are filters that may help to alleviate the problem?

The fuzziness will be harder to deal with: you can do some careful unsharp masking to give it a bit more definition, but there is a limit to what poor optics and/or focusing can be rescued!

Why not crop out part of the image demonstrating the issue here instead of the whole thing? I can make 640x480 JPEGs saved at 30% compression that come out around the 20Kb mark, so it should be easy to squeeze in under the limits.

Most photos can be improved a bit, but unless you are prepared to spend days hand-cloning and retouching, it probably would be much more effective time and cost-wise to get someone to go back and take the shot with a decent camera (if possible of course - if it was an event shot, can you find anyone else who was there and might sell the rights to use an image?).

Okay, let's try this. Let me know if there are any problems opening the file. Originally it was saved as .sitx but I couldn't upload it, so I changed the extension as .sit and it uploaded just fine.

I actually was able to get my hands on another photo that looked fine, but for learning purposes I'd still like to get ideas from everyone on how to fix it up if possible. Thanks!!

[LoisWakeman]

Angela - I've seen some bad photos in my time, but that almost takes the biscuit. I tried various things, and the best I could get was using an edge-preserving smoothing filter set quite strong, which loses a bit of detail in the figures, but does tone down that banding and noise a bit. But I think this is still a pigskin, rather than a silk, purse! Blown highlights, terrible noise, and where the bandng came from, who knows. Perhaps it was scanned on one of those little hand-held devices you sweep across the photo?

Supposedly the pictures were taken by a regular camera and both developed and put on a cd-rom. I took a look at some other pictures that were taken by the same camera, and the only time they don't come out grainy is in really bright sunlight. Even then it's pretty bad quality. I think these photos are a lost cause. Thanks everyone for the help.

[groucho]

<the only time they don't come out grainy is in really bright sunlight.> That sounds like someone used a low-light film or a cheap 60-minute developing place, not much you can do about that except tell them to use a slower film (EI 100 or 200) whenever possible, and try to avoid photo places that hire minimum labor from burger places.

If the same place transfered the images to CD, that may be where the lines come from, and they should be asked to do the job over at no charge. Otherwise...lines can be retouched in any application like PhotoShop. Sometimes with brush tools, other times one pixel at a time if you zoom all the way in and change each one to what the neighboring pixel looks like. (A very tedious way to do things.)

[Andrew B.]

I've never seen this much noise occurring naturally in jpeg images. The metadata on the image says Impak Film Sanner [sic], model F-12 Plus. It also mentions Adobe Photoshop CS Macintosh.

Anyway, I see others have advised you about getting a better version to work with. Also, this image is so dark and small I'm not sure what use it would have in a Powerpoint presentation. But if you don't care about how dark it is, it is pretty easy to get rid of the streaks (see attached). And if that's all you need, I can explain this. But if you want to get rid of the streaks PLUS lighten it, it will mean getting rid of even more noise that is not showing now, and that will take a good deal of hand work. Also, lightening won't reveal any image data from the shadows, because there is nothing there but noise.