File talk:Golden Gate San Francisco c1895 Digital Restoration.jpg

Source

Sorry, but I don't believe the restored image is a result of the damaged one. No source whatsoever. Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 22:46, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Really? From what original image then do you suppose I created the restoration from? I assure you that I executed this digital restoration in 2004 exclusively from a high resolution scan made directly from the damaged original Frank Tindall 5x7 glass plate taken about 1895 then in the possession of his (now late) great granddaughter, Judith Moore, who passed away in 2012. Centpacrr (talk) 10:31, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

It is good to see that you added the source. You say that the images are also displayed on http://cprr.org/Museum/Golden_Gate_c1895.html. However, the restored one shows a wider angle of the view than the old one has. On the right cliffs appear that are not present in the old image. The old image has untransparent spots in places where the restored one shows waves. Is that restoration? Where is the fishing boat? You say there is no fishing boat. Well, I agree you can not tell, but you can not tell these waves were there. There could have been rocks, there could have been a boat, there could have been animal, whatever. This is not restoration, this is making up scenery, I am sorry. Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 22:02, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

So what is your point? Are you suggesting that I should have added boats and/or animals that you speculate might have been there? (That would have been "making up scenery" as you say wouldn't it?) However that has nothing whatever to do with what this image file is intended to illustrate. This file is a composite "before and after" image showing the results of the process of digital image restoration as applied to a single damaged glass plate which also happened to be one of two side by side photographs taken by Frank Tindall some 120 years ago which I had digitally restored and then composited for use on my own railroad history website (CPRR.org) to illustrate what the Golden Gate and the entrance to San Francisco Bay looked like long before the Golden Gate Bridge spanning that portal to the Bay was built and opened in 1936. The example I chose to use here for that purpose was the left hand view of that pair of images. There is more than adequate digital information in the original high resolution scans of the two glass plates for me to tell what was and was not there (waves, boats, animals, etc), however all of these types of elements you speculate about are transient features that in real life would change from second to second. Instead the purpose of the entire digitally restored image that I created in 2004 and which has been continually displayed since then on my own website was to show the sea and landscape of the area as it existed in 1895. On the other hand what this low resolution "side by side" comparison image that I created and uploaded to Wikipedia in March, 2012, is meant to illustrate is what can be accomplished with digital image restoration techniques by showing what I started with on the left and the final result on the right. You are, of course, free to personally speculate or "believe" it shows something else, but that's what it is. Nothing more and nothing less. Centpacrr (talk) 04:16, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

I am not suggesting you should have added any of these. You don’t know what was there so assuming there were just waves is a wild speculations. You can’t derive the structure of your sky from the original, you can’t derive the lines in the waves, as if a ship just past, from the original, you can’t derive the cliffs at the right from the original, and you can’t derive what’s underneath the untransparent spots from the original. That is why I say it is not a restoration, it is at most an impression, almost a fantasy. I have seen better manipulated pictures missing a fallen out of favour apparatsjik, but you wouldn’t call them a restoration. At least, now you completed the file information. Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 14:25, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, sir, you are of course free to personally define "digital image restoration" any you want to, but your view of what that is seems to me to be so narrow as to be virtually impossible for any restorer to ever meet. In addition the elements that seem to be bothering you here are also all "transients" (water surface texture and waves, passing boats, sky cover, etc) that in real life change literally from second to second. Beyond that every restoration is a compromise to one degree or another and that's just the way restoration is as a visual art. In this case, however, your argument does not even apply because you are misunderstanding what this particular side by side "before and after" image is meant to illustrate in the first place which is the difference between a severely damaged original photograph and the final digital restoration of it. In other words, it is not illustrating the scene itself (i.e., "the Golden Gate in 1895"), but instead the "subject" of this particular image is "the 'before and after' of the process of digital image restoration". Centpacrr (talk) 15:55, 11 June 2014 (UTC)