Help trying to 'fix' wedding photos

[por]

Hi
Many years ago I got married and the photographer did not do a great job of the photos. He was not a professional but rather a guy who had his own ideas about what he could do with Photoshop etc.
He managed to make many of the photos very 'speckely'

So now I have GIMP on my Linux PC and I am trying to edit them so that they are presentable.

I have attached two examples from two different photos he took on the day to illustrate.

For me the quality of the image in 'Bad_wedding_image.jpg' looks terrible, were as in good_wedding_image.jpg it look fine

Essentially I want to make Bad_wedding_image.jpg look like good_wedding_image.jpg

Is there any way I can do this in GIMP (2.8.14 by the way) ?

Any hints and tips, or even a pointer to a tutorial would be handy.

[paynekj]

I've had a quick go using a RAW processor called Photivo, where I've done:
Wavelet denoising on the L channel
Luminance Denoising
Color Denoising

Bad_wedding_image-new.jpg (880.71 KiB) Viewed 5672 times

Kevin

[YAFU]

You have there high iso noise, luminance and chrominance. In GIMP there are some filters to fix it, for example in G'MIC plugin, Repair > Iain's Noise Reduction. But there are better OpenSource alternatives out of GIMP. For example what "paynekj" has recommended. Other software that you can use is RawTherapee. This is what I get with RawTherapee:


These filters are not automatic, you should to learn with some tutorial to work with it.
You notice that the more noise you eliminate, the more detail you lose. So you must find a balance between grain and detail (maybe I removed too much grain, so lose details too). So you after reducing noise you can try to recover details, particularly on the edges, eg in GIMP opening the photo that has reduced noise previously, duplicating the layer and apply "unsharp mask" in bottom layer. Then you with the tool "Eraser" and a blurred brush you composed between the two layers, erasing around the edges (like eyes) in top layer.
I recommend working with the best photo quality you have, that is, with the original JPGs, and better if you have the RAW's.

[okyl168]

Duplicate and apply Gmic/Testing/Iain fergusson/Ms nlmeans c noise2, fine 9, coarse 5 with opacity 90%

Bad_wedding_imageF.JPG (993.2 KiB) Viewed 5640 times

The problem was taken with high iso and he might have added saturation and contrast. The iso can be fixed by denoise, you can revert others by lower the saturation and contrast (50% overlay with inverted desaturated luminosity)

[sallyanne]

nice guys. I couldn't do much with this photo. Just tried a couple G'MIC filters
despeckle and denoise. (Iain's)
Mine ended up too smooth and I lost details.

Forgot about that filter. Thanks Okyl. I followed your steps and also checked a couple of the boxes at the bottom.

[Odinbc]

Nice work and info everyone.

[YAFU]

I really should give a try to this Iain Fergusson filter in testing.

Nice work everyone!

[dinasset]

some attempt

using one of my filters based on NLMEANS:

Bad_wedding_image-filtered-by-GMICnlmeans.JPG (1.2 MiB) Viewed 5601 times

using an external pgm (noiseware free):

Bad_wedding_image_filtered-by-noiseware.jpg (469.56 KiB) Viewed 5601 times

using another external filter (neat image free):

Bad_wedding_image_filtered-ny-neat-image.jpg (445.45 KiB) Viewed 5601 times

[AnMal]

very impressive work, everyone! the iain ferguson filters in g'mic are starting to look more interesting .

[por]

Thank you very much to everyone who has made an effort at resolving the problem.

I am very impressed with all the replies and very grateful for your efforts

I am also happy to find out what is wrong with the picture, i.e. high iso noise, luminance and chrominance, because without the info there would be no way of me even finding a way of resolving it.

I have installed the G'MIC plugin and will now try some of your suggestions.

Again thank you all very much.

[Ludde]

Nice results! specially those who ended up less supermodel'shop and kept the man natural heh.
Thank you guys for the information!