reconstructing damaged negative

[adrian tyler]

i don't know if the title of the thread is quite right, but here is my current major headache:

i made some colour pictures for a project and unfortunatly had some broken off film in the filmback which left blacked out parts on the images. the images are very difficult to retouch manually because of their content, ancient sculptures.

however i made the same exposures with a different filmback in black and white which are perfect, i have tried pasting the missing back and white "patches" into each colour channel, and the result is (obviously) grey patches in the colour image:

is there any way to paste the black and white "patches" into the colour channels and have them automatically blending in some way with the density of each channel?

if that sounds desperate, it is!

thanks

adrian

[Cesar Barreto]

Adrian,

Maybe you could work on LAB, a nice space for major retouching. Using b&w images on the luminosity channel, color could be cloned or imported from other channels from color images. Never tried this before, but it seems to be feasible.

Good luck!

Cesar B.

[Kirk Gittings]

Adrian, I believe this technique could be used. I use it to maintain consistent color in mixed light architectural interiors, but I think you might be able to use it to clone color into the b&w patch.
http://goodlight.us/writing/cloningcolor/cloningcolor-1.html

[adrian tyler]

that looks great kirk, i'm on the road for a week so i'll have a bit of time to try it out, thanks!

ade.