Restore old faded photos---Remember Digital ROC?

[gurtch]

An old friend posted an image on Facebook of himself with siblings and Dad and uncle. He is about 12 in the photo. I graduated from high school 69 years ago and have not seen him since. The image was color but has faded badly and the color is screwed up (different color layers I assume fade faster that others). I would like to surprise him with a restored image. In the past, I purchased and used a wonderful program many years ago called "Digital ROC'" made by "Applied Science Fiction". A wonderful Gentleman in Germany that I purchased his own design and 3D printed Film Holders for my Nikon 8000 medium format film scanner, published a download for Digital Roc Plug in. I successfully down loaded it and also the Release Notes for it. The latest version of Photoshop it is listed to run with is CS3. I have original disks of Photoshop going back to version 3. I have 3.0, 3.04, 3.05 (for Windows 95), 5.0, 6.0 Upgrade, 7.0, CS, CS5 and CS6. I downloaded and installed ROC Plugin , but it does not show up in the "FILTERS" menu or CS3. I could try installing an old version of Photoshop (probably CS) and then downloading and installing ROC again. My fear is that Photoshop CS may not install on Windows 10.
As a corollary, with all the hoopla about AI I would have thought someone would come up with an AI based photo restoration program. I do not want to individually color each person and object, I want something like ROC: One click and done. Any suggestions or warnings about installing a very old version of Photoshop, then installing a legacy program like ROC on it as a Plug In?
Or any suggestions for a modern program for restoring faded color photos, similar to ROC?
I am also going to post this on The Medium Format Forum...lots of very sharp folks over there.
Thanks
Dave Gurtcheff
Beach Haven, NJ

 

[darr]

The Restoration Filter in Photoshop Beta:

 

[gurtch]

At age 87 I decided to bite the bullet and purchase a yearly subscription to Photoshop, as all this AI hoopla interested me. I do often mask out foregrounds of my seascapes and put in another sky . I have a big collection of many different skies to call on. Masking foregrounds is tedious, and supposedly the new PS makes this very easy. This fact plus the Neural Filters to restore old photos with one click interested me. It is always a little scary for me whenever I "upgrade" my PC, either the operating system or big fat programs like Photoshop. So I downloaded Photoshop 2024. The first error message I got was: "CORTANA IN WINDOWS AS A STANDALONE APP IS DEPRECATED". What the F? No clue what that even means. But the second error message was more disturbing: "YOUR GRAPHICS PROCESSOR IS INCOMPATIBLE", DIRECT x UNAVAILABLE, AND INSUFFICIENT VRAM (O MB OF 1500 MB REQUIRED). I recently upgraded my PC with SSDs and 32MB RAM, was not looking to change the graphics card (I don't do it, I have a PC Guru that does it for me). Any advice? If I don't upgrade the Graphics card will the new PS features work? Maybe I bit off more than I can chew this time.


Thanks all for the help


Dave

 

[tenmangu81]

Do you mean 32 MB or 32 GB for your RAM ?
And what is your graphics card ?
For Photoshop 2024 and all the AI capacities to be effective, you need a good RAM and a recent graphics card (for a PC).

 

[gurtch]

Robert: I meant 32 GB RAM. My graphics card is XFX Radeon HD5750 1 GB. My system was custom built by Puget Systems to be suitable for Photoshop. It is now, however "long in the tooth" as they say. I ordered it April 2011, so it is now 13 years old, but it feels like an old shoe. I know it's quirks etc, so I have had it upgraded several times by a Professional. Other than the Photoshop warnings/etc, it serves me well.
Thanks for the help.
Dave

 

[tenmangu81]

Your graphics card seems to me rather old, and your issue could come from it. Otherwise, you could use Photoshop (recent versions) to get the expected results with the new Neural Filters.
As I don't know ROC, I can't tell you how it could work on your computer, and if an old Photoshop version could do the job.

 

[gurtch]

First: Thanks all for your help. Here is where I am. I now have subscription Photoshop 2024, as much as that irks me as CS6 is like a comfortable old shoe, and I own it outright. I still have it on my PC along with CS5, all with legacy plug-ins. I realize PS 2024 can probably duplicate the plug-ins, but I am familiar with the old stuff. My PC repair guy will put in a new graphics card, supposedly a good compromise between speed and affordability. It is an Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti. PS 2024 does indeed have a one click solution to restore old photos. Here is the 70 year old photo from Facebook of a boyhood friend and his family. I have not seen him since high school. The restoration could be better if I wanted to spend a lot of time tweaking it, but he was thrilled with the restoration as presented. Damn, that makes me feel good!

Dave