Can PS remove seal and gridlines from old passport photo?

Question

The only copy of an old photo of my wife I'm very fond of is on an old out-of-date passport. However  the image is ruined by being covered with a physical plastic seal that has green physical wavy grid lines and also the seal/photo is heavily embossed. See first scan attached to show the exact image I have to work with. Ignore pink square added by me to protect privacy.  I used Photoshop years ago, so have some (very) basic knowledge.  Before buying or trialling Photoshop, do you guys reckon it can sort this image? Thanks so much guys!!!

Lumigraphics · Accepted Answer

And just a reminder that ANYTHING can be done manually. With sufficient skill, you could recreate this photo by hand, pixel by pixel. I'm not advocating this, just saying what is possible. You could always commission a digital painter to recreate this image for your wife.

D Fosse · Answer

It could be possible to remove the wavy grid lines, but you would need a better photographic reproduction of the passport. The lines need to be crisp, and the lighting needs to be even so the lines have consistent color. Here they blur and bleed into the photo itself, and that makes everything more difficult. It's still not a walk in the park. You still have to replace those "missing pixels", and that can only be done by extrapolation. You'd select > color range targeting that cyan color, and content-aware fill. Photoshop's new ai-based algorithms can probably recognize that this is a face - but it won't know whose face. You may not be happy with the result. Wish I could give you a better answer. Even if it works it will take some time and cleaning up after. But this is probably worth a little extra effort.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded