WoW! Thanx for the wonderful comments! In answer to your question Glenna, I had only done about 4 restorations before joining OPR.
I was lucky with the above photo as there was very little damage to the right side and I was able to copy and paste and clone alot of the background without too much trouble.
First, I use PaintShop Pro v9. I find it more user friendly and absolutely ideal for restoration. The main tools I use are the clone tool, smudge tool, dodge/burn and change to target brush (not sure if this is available in CS)...all varying sizes and opacities. Considering the extensive damage to the photos we are working on, I do not consider texture on the original photo to be important. However if you are going to smooth it out, make sure you do the whole photo and be careful not to make it look soft, ie lose your defining lines and shadows.
I start off with my change to target brush and sample the colour I want and paint over and over the spot at about 10% opacity until I am happy with the colour match. Then I usually clone at 50% strength and keep going over a spot until I am happy with it. Once I am done with the cloning I use the smudge brush at between 48% and 58% to blend in my cloning...here I try to keep the brush going round in circles to avoid drag lines. When doing this, always follow the contours and the original shadowing. When I want to 'draw' a line as you saw in the video (the jaw line) I use my smudge brush at about 75% (watch the size of your brush here) to pull it and if necessary use the burn tool to 'draw' it in. I always use the the dodge and burn tools to add highlights or shadowing. Once I am happy with the overall work of a photo, I zoom right in and use the smudge brush at about 48% usually in a small brush size to get rid of any drag lines. When all is done and I am happy with it, I add about 4% noise and sometimes a further 3%...only do this once you are absolutely certain you have finished.
I downloaded a screen capture to record a bit of my work in progress...unfortunately it hung for a bit so I had to stop recording but it should give you some idea of my workflow. Next time I will do a colour one so that you can the change to target brush in action. You can go here to view it:
http://www.twango.com/media/Ziaphra.OPR/Ziaphra.10001I need to find a better screen capture recorder (free of course) as the one I have becomes a HUGE avi file which I then had to compress as most sites only allow a max upload of 100mb. Maybe mpeg would be better? So if anyone knows of one, please let me know.
