Remove board/card texture from old photos

[khendar]

I'm currently working on restoring some old family photos (tears/scratches, colourising etc). These photos were scanned from prints and some of them were on that textured card stock that was so popular back in the day. The result is that some of the photos have a grid of white dots or cross-hatched texture which ruins the photo.

Short of rescanning these photos (not possible in many cases) does anyone have any tips on how to eliminate this texture from the images ?

I have tried the Fast Fourier Transform plugin for Photoshop which seems to do a reasonable job but isn't able to remove the entire pattern. I'm not sure whether that's because I'm not using it correctly or whether its not capable of eliminating it properly.

I'll post an example later on when I have access to my files.

[colinbm]

There was a thread, maybe earlier this year about removing the canvas pattern from some old scanned portraits.
Worked well too
Col

[ameerat42]

I'm sure that thread was by ving.
(If so, would the real ving pls verify.)
((Actually, I thought it was left hanging a bit. I think you're on the right track, Khendar.))
Am.

[dbax]

@ Am, I think Mongo actually began that thread, I'll see if I can find it................

Ah yes this is the one I was thinking of http://www.ausphotography.net.au/for...Digital-Images
hope it helps
good luck

[colinbm]

@ Am, I think Mongo actually began that thread, I'll see if I can find it................
Ah yes this is the one I was thinking of http://www.ausphotography.net.au/for...Digital-Images
hope it helps
good luck

Good on ya dbax, thats the one
Col

[khendar]

Cheers for the links guys. I will have to go through that thread I think.

As promised here's an example of what I'm up against:

Original Scan
Slightly colourised
Colourised with FFT filter

As you can see it has had some effect however its still pretty bad.