I’ve long had a large amount of Clayton Family photos in my possession. Some came to us when my Aunty Pat died. AS well as her own photos she had a large amount of her parents photos. I cleared out her house, the photos went to my mum and then later to me.
I like this one, which shows a small family group. The male child is my adopted grandfather E.H Clayton, his older sister Saah and his younger sister Bessy. they are featured with an older man, known as “uncle Jim”. I cannot find an uncle Jim in the genealogy record, so i wonder whether the man might have been their father. He certainly bears a striking resemblance to their father, Ernest Adam Clayton.
The other night I decided, that now I have photoshop and an openAi subscription, that it might be time to try to restore these old photos and get the best out of them.
Attempt 1
My first attempt, I thought was near perfect, however it sent me down a rather unexpected rabbit hole. Notice that the magazine cover Jim is holding seems significantly improved. Excited, I then zoomed in on it and determined that it said “the bystander” i then started Googling “Bystander magazine” I found that it was a real thing and that it matched the period that the photo would have been taken in. in fact theres a whole section devoted to it on the British Archives website.
However, when I referred back to the original photo, I could clearly see that the original photo did not say ‘The Bystander’, it said ‘Yes or No’. So Ai had completely hallucinated the title of the pamphlet and inserted what it though I wanted to see.
So I had to take action, although the ai rendered image was very good, it just wasn’t accurate, So I screenshotted the original and put that into Chat GPT gettling it to focus on restoring it as faithfully as possible.
This is the outcome, I then took the screenshot back to photoshop and blended the pamphlet into the AI rendered, whole family scene. I’m very pleased with the outcome. Although the AI has removed the brick on the floor and the torn paper, the rest of the image seems very good, and I feel the over image is an improvement.
Hi there Phil,
Hope you are well, I remember when you lived in the cottage far end of
G Rd.in years gone by, I went to school with your mum, her family
we’re very nice & kind. I remember Hopkin clearing the roads along with
Bill Chatterton plodding round Tidza with the horse & plough,I’ve often
wondered if Parish owned the horse? as I seem to recall a horse drawn
Hearse in a shed belonging to Horace Willshawe’s Father, he was an egg
farmer obviously many large hencotes! I know Bethels garage had the
motorised hearse in their garage which was used in my earlier yrs.
Regards,Alan & Elsie.
A bit dodgy, that AI Phil. It can be really helpful, if you guide it along the right path, and asking the right questions. It’s let me down a time or two, but I blame myself for that.
Yes, it can make mistakes, but I use it every day for work, I’m reasonably good at getting it to do what I want. If you look t the photos, you can see that it’s done a pretty damn fine job.